"These measures should be viewed at least in the context of at least two years. And some goal should be for the GDP in 2022 to be at the level of 2019, with a serious start to changing the structure of the economy and the way of understanding the economy," said Professor Veselin Vukotić this week at a meeting in the Government where measures to help the failing economy were discussed. in the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The magician of the Montenegrin economy - as he has been labeled for years, is most deserving of the fact that the Montenegrin economic elite accepted for granted the thesis about the end of history and the absence of an alternative to the (neo)liberal concept, which is collapsing today like a house of cards. Although the doctrine that the professor advocates is on its knees, as even Francis Fukuyama says, and a large number of citizens were on the verge of bare survival even before that, Vukotić responded to Prime Minister Duško Marković's invitation to discuss the topic - state interventions to help the economy.
The professor, a great opponent of state interventionism and protectionism, used this opportunity to state that his idea of a microstate has passed the test of time and at the same time emphasized that he supports the government's economic measures to mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus epidemic.
The beginning of the end of neoliberalism is linked to the financial crisis of 2008, when many countries of the world intervened and saved their banks. This was also done by the Government of Montenegro when it made a decision on state intervention in the First Bank.
"Economic freedoms attract investors, attract entrepreneurs, increase production, increase exchange," said Vukotić, promoting the neoliberal model of development and the free market that Montenegro introduced before it developed its own production.
This made the country highly dependent on imports with a large foreign trade deficit, public debt and with the fear of shortages of basic foodstuffs in crisis conditions.
"Vision is more important than knowledge," Professor Vukotić quoted Albert Einstein, in one of his works in which he tried to answer how the underdeveloped economy of Montenegro can reach the level of income that EU countries have. As then, so today - the poor economy was and remains.
Gray eminence of Montenegrin privatization
Good connoisseurs of the situation will say that Vukotić's vision of Montenegro becoming a Mediterranean tiger was magical for a handful of privileged people, who during the propagation of his ideology of neoliberalism came to enormous wealth.
Vukotić strongly advocated privatization, and he is the creator of the mass voucher privatization program, in which vouchers were distributed to citizens free of charge and could be exchanged for company shares. However, a large number of those vouchers, in the absence of the right information, ended up with privatization funds that closed a large number of state-owned enterprises in order to get valuable assets.
For a large number of citizens, Vukotić's vision was more than disastrous - hundreds of destroyed factories, thousands of workers on the streets, crumbs for social workers, crumbs for pensioners...
The gap between the rich and the poor has never been deeper, but neither has the country's economic weakness - it is enormously indebted and the debt could reach 90 percent of the gross domestic product.
"Private property is a mechanism that turns enemies into friends", "We don't sell companies, we buy strategic partners", are just some of the sentences that could be heard from Vukotić.
This advocate of the free market and the inspirer of the Montenegrin economic school, that entire period still remains on the state budget.
Vukotić was in the cabinet of Montenegrin Prime Minister Vuk Vukadinović from 1985 to 1988, and he was also the Minister for Privatization and Entrepreneurship in the federal government of Ante Marković from 1989 to 1992.
In 1992, he founded the international postgraduate studies "Entrepreneurial Economics" at the Faculty of Economics in Podgorica.
And while he convinced students that the future lies in entrepreneurship, business ideas and the open market, he firmly held his position on the Board of Directors in Plantaže, which remained majority owned by the state. He has been the president of the board of directors in that company since 2006.
He was also part of the "smart, young and beautiful" group, and a long-time vice-president of the Privatization Council, thus participating in the privatization of a large number of Montenegrin companies.
In 2006, Vukotić, together with the then director of the Agency for Economic Restructuring and Foreign Investments, Branko Vujović, was accused of violating the Law on Public Procurement, due to the violation of regulations when hiring lawyer Mark Harrison as a consultant in the process of privatizing Kotor's "Jugopetrol" for three million euros.
The criminal complaint was submitted to the then state prosecutor Vesna Medenica by the Group for Changes. Podgorica Basic Court acquitted them of the charges in 2007.
Harrison later appeared in the Panama Papers where he registered 13 companies linked to Montenegro.
UDG competitive with help from the budget
Vukotić strongly believes in competitiveness, which is why, at least at first it seemed, he founded the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) with partners (among others the long-term prime minister and current president of the state Milo Đukanović and the current president of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts).
"The book "Dangerous words" or the dictionary of free market economy is built into the foundations of the UDG building. A sign that graduates of this University will be free (in demand) on the wider market... This is our preparation for entering the EU! Our goal is to help Montenegro become a Mediterranean tiger in the EU!", said Vukotić. However, the authoritarian, maltene biblical dictionary also says something about his understanding of freedom, so at UDG there are "13 commandments for taking exams and colloquiums".
Brzo Vukotić complained that the system of financing higher education in Montenegro and in the region is "undemocratic and discriminatory towards students of private colleges", because these students do not have access to the budget funds of all students.
He was supported by Milo Đukanović, then prime minister, so UDG soon "became competitive" with the help of budget funds, which negatively affected the University of Montenegro, which saw reductions in grants and the number of students and increased debts.
"A new time calls for new people! A new time calls for new thinking!", is one of the conclusions of the professor's presentation from the meeting in the Government on April 13 this year, with which even the biggest critics of his development model could agree.
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