CVETKOVIC: Budget discussion deal was not reached

(Mirko Cvetkovic)

The President of the Government of Serbia, Mirko Cvetkovic stated today (December, 24, 2008) that concrete agreement with the Parliament member groups of the Serbian Parliament, regarding discussion of the Budget proposal for 2009, was not reached.

After discussing with the Cheifs of Parliament member groups of the Serbian Parliament, Cvetkovic expressed hope that the budget would be accepted by the end of this year.

The Prime Minister said that those talks would be continued individually, in order to manage to have a discussion about all amandmans and accept the budget by the end of this year.

According to his words, one of the ideas is to divide the remaining time by the end of the year equally to all Parliament member groups and to discuss about amandmans in the Parliament hall.

The second idea is to have those discussions separately, between the Minister of finances of Serbia and the Parliament groups, in order to consider which amandmans were acceptable, which would significantley dicrease the time left for discussions about them.

All Parliament groups, except for the Serbian Radical Part, are ready to make a deal about the best possible solution so the budget could be accepted by the end of the year.

- SRS will not give up from discussion about amandmans, said Cvetkovic, but also he mentioned he was hoping that they could make agreement with this Parliament group as well.

It is the best for the Government that the budget is accepted, than to have temporary financing, even tough the expenses would be smaller in that case, said Cvetkovic.

- Acceptance of the budget will allow the Government of Serbia to lead planned economic politics in the coming year.