Serbia Parliament Approves 2010 Budget

The Serbian parliament approved the country’s draft budget for next year on Monday. Beta news agency reported that 127 parliamentarians voted for the bill and four voted against. There are 250 deputies in the parliament.

The draft budget foresees revenue next year at 655.9 billion dinars (6.87 billion euros) and expenditure of 762.9 billion dinars (7.99 billion euros), creating a planned deficit of around 107 billion dinars (1.12 billion euros), equivalent to 3.5 per cent of GDP.

The country's government adopted draft bill on the budget for next year on December 1. Belgrade has complied with an agreement with the IMF mission to adopt the budget at least two weeks before a session of the Executive Board of the IMF planned for Tuesday in Washington, when the country expects confirmation of continued arrangements with the Fund.

It was uncertain whether the ruling coalition in parliament, led by Serbian President Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party, would cobble together the necessary number of votes to approve the budget, after four deputies for an ethic minority party, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, SVM, announced they would vote against the draft. 



In the end, the 124 MPs of the ruling coalition were backed by two independent deputies, Vladan Batic and Jovan Damjanovic, and an ethnic Albanian deputy from southern Serbia, Riza Halimi.


SVM deputy Balint Pastor said he could not vote for the budget because of disagreements over the amount of money earmarked for the northern province of Vojvodina, home to Serbia’s ethnic Hungarian minority.
Deputies were expected on Monday to vote on more than 200 submitted amendments to the draft budget for 2010.