Vucic's 10 years in power: How it all started and what has been done

Photo: Nikola Tomic, Tanjug/Dimitrije Goll, Dimitrije Nikolic, Rade Prelic

Exactly ten years ago, after the victory of the "Let's Move Serbia" coalition, Aleksandar Vucic became minister of defense and first deputy prime minister in the Government of Serbia, in charge of the fight against corruption and crime, and since then he has initiated economic development of the country, an active foreign policy, and returned the issue of Kosovo and Metohija to the negotiation table with the international community.

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"In ten years, Serbia has modernized, changed, realized that it can be a country of success, not of failure and decline," Vucic said yesterday, summing up his decade in power, first as minister of defense, and then as prime minister and president.

As minister of defense, he started the modernization of the Army, the strengthening of the country's defense capacities, the procurement and production of necessary weapons, and all the while remained faithful to the concept of military neutrality, which he stresses is in accordance with the freedom-loving tradition of the Serb people.

After the victory of his SNS party in March 16, 2014 elections, he became prime minister with his cabinet formed on April 27, 2014.

He held that position until August 2016, when, after SNS won again in elections held on April 24, 2016, he began his second term as prime minister.

The most important moves made by the government headed by Aleksandar Vucic in 2014 were difficult economic reforms that led to resolving the issue of a huge budget deficit, which enabled the country's financial stability, attracting foreign investments, resulting in an increase in wages and pensions and improvement of the standard of living.

Those were probably the most difficult economic measures in Serbia's recent past. By reducing pensions and salaries in the public sector, bankruptcy was avoided and the budget successfully recovered.

The new mandate as prime minister began in April 2016, and after winning the election in April 2017 he became president of Serbia for the first time, and again in 2022.

With a responsible economic policy, income in Serbia became significantly higher, so in July 2022 the average wage was around 635 euros, compared to 330 ten years ago.

According to Finance Minister Sinisa Mali, the unemployment rate has been reduced from 25.9 to 10.6 percent by the first quarter of this year, and there were 3.9 billion euros of foreign direct investments in 2021.

The public debt is far below the criteria stipulated by the Maastricht agreement.

"We passed important reform laws, which improved the economic environment in the Republic of Serbia, and thanks to the management of public finances, we are constantly working to improve the living standard of citizens of Serbia. Year after year, we increase salaries, pensions and the minimum wage, and this is a policy we will not give up on," Mali said.

What's more, Serbia proved to be a rarely effective country in the most difficult periods of the pandemic, something that was decisively contributed to by the personal engagement of President Vucic.

Today Serbia is globally recognized as an important player in the field of software and computer technologies, an industry that accounts for significant exports.

By bringing strategic partners into large economic systems that were on the verge of failing, a new lease on life was given to entire areas such as Smederevo and Bor, thus saving thousands of local jobs. Despite numerous problems, obviously important results have been achieved, in some domains truly exceptional.

In addition to fiscal consolidation and bringing numerous investors with the primary goal of creating as many jobs as possible, there have also been a number of infrastructural and economic projects completed.

Vucic paid special attention to traffic infrastructure with the aim of connecting the whole of Serbia with high-speed roads and railways.

This is evidenced, among other things, in the Milos Veliki highway, the completion of Corridor 10 up to North Macedonia and Bulgaria borders, the Belgrade Novi Sad high-speed railway...

New industrial facilities were built, among them in places where economic activity had died down during the transition period, or earlier, which created new jobs where they were most needed and where they revitalized the entire area, stopping young people from leaving.

In addition to all of the above, probably the most important achievement is actually making the space for business wide open, for entrepreneurship, the creation of a positive and encouraging climate, and in this sense the situation in Serbia in recent years is better than it has ever been.

The results can also be seen in foreign policy when it comes to defending our territorial integrity.

During these ten years, 23 countries have withdrawn their recognition of Kosovo as independent and thus the "Kosovo issue" has been put back on the negotiating table.

Today, 101 out of 193 UN member states do not recognize Kosovo, that is, they respect the territorial integrity of Serbia.

With the arrival of the new government in 2012, negotiations on Serbia's membership in the EU also started.

Considerable investments were made in healthcare - healthcare facilities throughout the country were overhauled, as well as clinical centers, while new, Covid hospitals were built in Batajnica, Krusevac, and Novi Sad.

New jobs were created in healthcare, and salaries of healthcare workers are twice as high today.

There were also results in sports, so in the previous 10 years, Serbia hosted several big international competitions for the first time.

From 2012 until today, in contrast to the 2000-2011 period, the total number of medals won in Olympic and Paralympic events increased by 118 percent.

All sports associations have had their budgets increased and for the last ten years have been receiving payments within seven days.

Compared to 2012, the increase in prize money for medals won at Olympic and Paralympic Games was 100 percent, and in the last 10 years, prizes have been paid within seven days.

Now that he has been in power for ten years, Vucic said that Serbia has made huge strides and added that he is proud of those results because the country "doesn't look like" what he inherited in 2012.

(Telegraf.rs)