BELGRADE, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The new 30-month-long non-financial arrangement between Serbia and International Monetary Fund (IMF) "confirms Serbia's good economic results and that it no longer needs financial assistance," Serbia's Finance Minister Sinisa Mali said on Thursday.
Announcing that the Board of Executive Directors of IMF Wednesday approved within its Policy Coordination Instrument (PCI) the new arrangement with Serbia that will last until January 2021, Mali in a statement said that the agreement is yet another step on the country's path to structural reforms and represents a good signal for investors.
"It is important that we maintain macroeconomic and financial stability, improve our economy, increase competitiveness and ensure high growth rates, because this only means opening new jobs and achieving a better standard for our citizens," Mali said in the statement.
He emphasized that the main goals of the program are maintenance of public debt and the overall deficit in the defined frames in relation to GDP (gross domestic product), reform of the public sector salary system, continuation of the tax administration reform and establishment of measures to reduce the processing time of VAT refunds, adoption of the new law on fees as well as to keep the inflation within defined frameworks.
"We are fully committed to these goals, which will be our absolute priority in the coming period. It is important that we strengthen our institutions and make them even more efficient, and by this firstly I mean the modernization of the tax administration," Mali said.
"The new cooperation program with the support of the PCI is exclusively counseling and does not foresee the use of financial resources," the statement concluded.
