Contact center where companies can report unfair competition to inspection to open in April

Beginning with April, companies in Serbia will be able to report unfair competition or irregularities and inconsistencies in inspectors' conduct electronically to the inspection service of the Republic of Serbia through a contact center, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government announced.

– The application form will be available at the inspection services' portals, where they will also be able to follow the procedure which their case goes through – said the head of the Unit for Support to Coordination Commission for Inspection Supervision of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Dragan Pusara.

He said that this would additionally improve the inspection services' work and help counter the corruption.

– Within the information system for inspection supervision E-inspector, there are currently 36 inspection services of the Republic of Serbia, and five inspection services of the Ministry of Agriculture, who had previously developed systems, should join by the end of the year – he said.

He added that the Tax Administration system will be integrated afterwards, but that inspectors will only be able to see the tax standing of the supervised subject, in order to see what the debts are and whether there is any failure to comply with the Law on Tax Inspection.

Pusara reminded that the E-inspector system was a tool which facilitates work for inspectors, contains the required orders, reports, scripts, decisions, requests for initiation of offense proceedings, reports of economic offenses, while also providing insight into the findings of other inspection services.

– A register of subjects and objects of inspection supervision has also been formed, acting as a database of Serbian economy and featuring over two million subjects – companies, as well as schools, hospitals, kindergartens, faculties, which are also subject to supervision – he said.

He explained that everyone within this register is ranked by the degree of risk, which helps inspectors see whether more frequent controls are necessary, and inspectors can now see the history of supervision for the first time.

As one of the achievements of the E-inspector system, Pusara said that the measures and penalties have been standardized.

– It is no longer possible for two inspectors in two different places in Serbia, acting under the same order, to impose different measures – Pusara said.

Business entities, he explained, can also ask for an agreement on admitting an offense to be signed, whereby the offense can be forgiven if it is made for the first time.

– In Serbia, state inspectors carry out around 500,000 supervisions a year, and nearly a half pertains to food control, when entering the country and in the market – he said.

Pusara also said that there were 2,384 state inspectors active in Serbia at the moment, “which is three times fewer than the reference number, measured per capita or the size of the economy”.

– In the next three years, 1,272 inspectors should be employed in all 44 state inspection services and there are already job contests in 11 ministries for the employment of 450 inspectors, mostly in the Ministry of Agriculture – Pusara said.

Ministarstvo državne uprave i lokalne samouprave Republike Srbije

Poreska uprava Srbije

Ministarstvo poljoprivrede, šumarstva i vodoprivrede Republike Srbije

Dragan Pušara

E inspector

inspection

unfair competition

Law on Tax Inspection