Ana Brnabic: Plans like "Serbia 2030" are realized along with investments, peace and stability

Photo: Tanjug/Amir Hamzagic

National Assembly President Ana Brabic said today that plans like the national strategy "Serbia 2030" presented by President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic are implemented with the help of good investments and preserving peace and stability in the country.

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"If you have good investments, they result in economic growth and economic progress. Without investments, without GDP growth, and investments are one of the basic prerequisites for that, salaries and pensions cannot go up. What is crucial for people is their standard of living and whether we will all together really succeed in making the average salary in 2030 1,300 euros, whether we will succeed in making the average pension 750 euros," Brabic told TV Prva.

"Point 1 in this crazy world is peace and stability. Point 2 is security. How can we preserve peace and stability, how can we protect Serbia from all this, from this madness that is happening around us, and so far, however, we have again shown that we can do it successfully," explained the president of the Assembly of Serbia.

Brabic recalled that one of the biggest challenges faced by the current authorities was the Covid pandemic, when Serbia showed all the things it can do thanks to a plan and program, but also because the country had an economic and medical crisis headquarters.

"Serbia at the time demonstrated everything it can do again thanks to a plan, thanks to a program, thanks to the fact that the president set everything up and said, 'Okay, we have two crisis headquarters. I head the crisis headquarters for the economy as the president of the Republic, and Ana, as the prime minister, heads the crisis headquarters for medicine. We work together all the time, everyone does their job. For the first time media outlets such as BBC or CNN were saying that Serbia is the best country in Europe," she said.

She added that during the pandemic, Serbia was the first in continental Europe to acquire vaccines thanks to a good plan, as well as that in 2008, Serbia had irresponsible politicians who did not have a plan for the country to overcome the global economic crisis.

"It (the pandemic) was an incredible crisis, but Serbia showed it fights crises because it has a responsible leadership. Here is a parallel, a contrast, the way it was in 2008. You had irresponsible politicians who said, 'Our plan is for Serbia to benefit from this crisis'. How? Using what? What are we going to do? We don't know. We fared worse than others. Then there was the pandemic when people were losing jobs, and we had an economic crisis headquarters. At that time, according to the World Bank, Serbia was one of only ten countries in the world that recorded an increase in employment rates," said Brabic.

The president of the National Assembly also pointed out that Serbia is one of the countries that invests the most in increasing the birth rate, but that much more needs to be done in this regard, and that is why the "Serbia 2030" strategy envisages improving the birth rate by investing 220 million euros.

"I think that we are a country that is certainly near the top, if not one of the best countries in the world, in terms of birth rate support. So, when you look at these benefits like maternity leave, family leave, how long it lasts, how much time family members get to take care of children. When you look at the support in terms of in vitro fertilization, that there is incredible financial support for the first, second, third, fourth child, but also that there is support for mothers buying their first property and support for young people buying their first property, that's all great support, but it's obviously not enough and we have to do much more," she explained.

"I think that in 2012, if I'm not mistaken, we were at 1.3 or 1.4 according to that percentage of total fertility. We are now above 1.6, we are the best in the region, but we need at least 2.1. Therefore, we have to work much more and think about how we are going to work on it, because what's the future for if you don't have someone to leave all that to," said the president of the Assembly of Serbia.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)