There are no savings or rationalizations in the budget rebalancing for 2023, nor in the Bill on the budget for 2024. You should not believe the statements, but look at the numbers, and they say that there is no reduction of "unproductive expenses" by either 200 or 35 million. In reality, the current budget will increase by 7 percent or 83 million, which includes increases in all traditionally criticized positions.
This was assessed for "Vijesti" by a public policy researcher at the NGO Institute of Alternatives Marko Sosic.
"There is no use for a 5 percent reduction on official trips or national teams, a total of about 300 thousand, if we will give almost a quarter more than the plan for this year, that is, four million more (21 million in total) for work contracts alone. The reduction of "unproductive spending" should be the result of in-depth analyzes of budget lines and precise cuts followed by changes in laws and established practices, and not the subject of politicking and superficial statements. The budget proposal does not show that it has been worked on until now," Sošić emphasized.
According to him, the gross salaries of employees in the administration increased by 40 million compared to the current year and in 2024 will amount to 675 million, and this increase comes on top of the current record year, in which we pay 100 million more for salaries in the state administration than last year. .
"Even this planned amount will not be enough, because the unions protest that the budget does not incorporate everything that was negotiated in the collective agreements, and new parliamentary amendments to the Law on Salaries of Employees in the Public Sector, which selectively increase the coefficients of certain professions, are already being announced . It is about the dizzying growth of this item, the cause of which is the increase in the number of employees, the increase in wages in accordance with the negotiated new collective agreements, as well as in the parliamentary amendment of the already boring Law on wages of employees in the public sector", said Sošić.
He pointed out that there have never been more employees and they have never cost us more, and for a long time there has been no less talk about the need for optimization, which cannot be the individual responsibility of each minister, nor does the role of the Minister of Finance in that area end by reducing the number of systematized positions in own ministry.
"Prime Minister Milojko Spajic and the Ministry of Finance must decisively stop irrational employment, not only in the central administration, but also indirectly, through the legal framework and in state enterprises, public institutions, and through special measures in municipalities. The new law on salaries of employees in the public sector must be a priority of the new Government and the Ministry of Finance, in order to sort out the current poorly controlled chaos," Sošić emphasized.
The interlocutor of "Vijesti" states that there are some discrepancies in the figures related to the capital budget.
"Something does not match in the figures regarding the capital budget. Prime Minister Milojko Spajić said that through the traffic lights they decided to keep only the projects that are mature in the new budget. However, the Minister of Finance Novica Vuković recently stated that out of 374 projects in this year's budget, 215 are completely "dead", that not a single cent was spent on them this year due to the immaturity of those project ideas. Then how did we get to 330 projects again even after the triage? "Obviously, some "dead" projects have remained," Sošić pointed out.
He states that the second problematic figure is "new" projects, which are 80 - even though a month ago, the working group of the Ministry of Finance selected only 18 of all the received ideas for new projects.
"They also admit that even that choice may be excessive due to the immaturity of the ideas. Where these new 60 or so projects suddenly came from and what their evaluations are, that is what the Government should share with the public. The wages of employees have increased more than the capital budget - next year we will have a capital budget that is about 10% larger, in which there will be almost the same number of projects, with one (highway) of 90 million - which means that for the remaining 329 only 190 million remain. It is good that the reform of the capital budget is being considered, and it is good that a new directorate was formed in the Ministry. But it should be remembered that, criticizing the current situation, Prime Minister Spajić essentially criticized the work of the Minister of Finance Spajić, i.e. his actions from 2021 when he introduced literally hundreds of immature projects into the budget through the "Montenegro Now" program, accepting almost everything came from municipalities or deputies as an idea," Sošić pointed out.
Why only RTCG is privileged
Sošić said that it is not clear why, in the laws accompanying the budget, only RTCG was proposed to change the financing, out of all consumers whose budget is determined by law as a percentage, and of which there are at least ten more in our system.
"The fiscal strategy from the end of 2021, which everyone has forgotten (as well as the fiscal council that we don't have yet), prescribed the abolition of all percentage budget allocations. The existing solution, which ties RTCG financing to a percentage of GDP, is cumbersome from the beginning and needs to be refined. However, a bad solution cannot be replaced by an even worse and more imprecise one, especially with proposals for laws that have neither passed a public discussion, nor are they followed by an impact analysis, nor has anyone in the administration or outside heard of them until we saw them published on the Government's website. , pointed out Sošić.
He hopes that the deputies will manage to consider the budget in detail in the short time they have and that they will not make it even worse, that is, that the ruling majority will refrain from conditioning the adoption of the budget with amendments to the capital budget.
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