Serbia’s 980 Million Euro Aid Package Splits Mali, Nikezic

“The budget deficit of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), projected in the rebalance, will certainly deepen because of lower revenue from taxes, excise duties and other sources, and higher spending on investments in Expo and other projects, on top of the cost of gifts to citizens from the state treasury ahead of elections, aimed at winning over part of the electorate,” Draskovic told Beta.

Employers and economists: Package does not threaten stability

Milos Nenezic, president of the Serbian Employers Union, disagrees that public debt is a problem, even though he shares the opposition’s view that borrowed money should go toward investment rather than current spending.

“Our public debt, which is around 44 percent, is almost half the European average,” Nenezic said.

Veljko Mijuskovic, a professor at the Faculty of Economics, goes further and rejects the idea that the package is an election measure, arguing the measures should not be judged in isolation.

“You cannot break these measures apart like that. You have to look at them as an integral package,” Mijuskovic said.

The disagreement over the same set of numbers, then, is not a dispute about the figures themselves but about what those figures mean for a budget already widened by 59 billion dinars in the rebalance. Whether the deficit stays at 3.5 percent of GDP, as the Ministry of Finance projects, or exceeds that mark, as Nikezic and Draskovic argue, will only be confirmed once the final accounts for the 2026 budget are closed.