Reforms without Strategy

Can we see (any kind of an) end to our expectations? The end should be determined by the Government’s package deal: improving solvency; increasing economic activity; stimulating export growth and domestic products purchase; maintaining employment rate; tending to the debts that are increasingly coming in. The goal is, therefore, well-known – investments should be increased, because only with their help can the development be made sustainable and with that it can reach the level achieved by comparable countries in transition. And that is what we need and what, again, opens up the story about competitiveness, about how our economy could become competitive in some near future, and of course, how it could become an exporting economy. Export should be the generator of that healthy economy growth. It would be considered a huge success if, in the next ten years we could achieve yearly growth rate of about 5%, which is important for tending to the external debt. Because if it does not achieve social product growth rate of 5% per year, Serbia could get into serious problems, and tending to the debts could become unbearable. Specifically because of that we should do everything that can be done in order to, not only boost foreign investments but also increase domestic savings, which is an important development factor everywhere in the world. However, the attractiveness of our economy to the direct foreign investments is obviously low, because of still unresolved key obstacles to their entering our economy: there still is no explicit political conviction that strategic investors have to come. So, a question is posed: Which is, in the era of financial crisis, real measure of foreign direct investments inflow, especially since the expectations are very different, from those reserved, to those that are expecting an investment boom this year. Will, for example, as was announced until recently, Telekom Serbia be sold to Deutche Telecom? Is there an interest of big german partners to enter proprietary structure of: trade, information technologies, telecommunication, energetic, car-industry and construction industry of Serbia? Surely, it would be good to take an advantage of the expressed desire of German businessmen for greater cooperation, because such solutions can bring better results for both sides.