On May 27th, Libertarian Club – Libek organized a panel discussion called „How does government spend our money“ at Hilton Belgrade.
On the event, experts discussed the public spending in Serbia and different fields in which public spending could be cut, opening more space for tax reduction. Besides this, panelists explored examples of corruption and wasteful spending, while Libek also announced the Tax Freedom Day in Serbia (which is on May 28th) and its new Tax Calculator platform published on the online media outlet of the organization, Talas.rs
The panelists on the event were Duško Pejović, the director of the State Audit Institution of Serbia, Milojko Arsić, a professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade, Vesna Radojević, an investigative journalist from KRIK – Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, a leading investigative journalism outlet in Serbia, and Mihailo Gajić, director of the Economic Research Unit of Libek. The panel was moderated by Miloš Nikolić, the President of Libek.
Serbia has stabilized its public finance in recent years, but many challenges with public spending remain. From wasteful public procurements, subsidies for private investors, corruption and employment through political party channels the government spends a significant part of tax money on things that are not necessary.
In order to speed up the economic growth, Serbia needs to improve in several areas. One of these areas is reduction of taxes, especially the burden on labor. In recent years, Libek has been promoting its proposal for reduction of the burden on labor that could save over EUR 600 million in the private sector and be a basis for bigger domestic private investments, an area in which Serbia lags behind the other countries in the region.