State officials, National Bank of Serbia even independent experts, otherwise critical of the authorities... all these days are trying to convince the people that there is no need to empty dinar accounts and then buy phase.
But a little round of phoning exchange offices across the country shows how much it's worth.
"We have five hundred euros, but you have to come in the next couple of hours. We can't leave you any longer," says a money changer in New Belgrade.
One exchange in Kragujevac could "collect" two thousand euros in a couple of hours. "The course is the same everywhere and you will hardly find a better one in all of Kragujevac," he says over the phone.
The attack on exchange offices began ten days ago after President Aleksandar Vučić warned that the US sanctions against NIS could spill over to all banks that work with the oil giant. And to the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), which, for now, continues to do business with NIS.
NBS abolishes the commission of exchange offices
The National Bank, on the other hand, blamed everything on articles in the media and on social networks that "created panic without a real basis". They reiterated that, if necessary, they will terminate cooperation with NIS in order to preserve the payment system.
However, the minimal drop of 0,2 percent of the dinar against the euro seems to have contributed to the panic, after the exchange rate had been almost fixed for years.
"The jump we had this December is the biggest movement of the exchange rate this year, and probably longer. The situation is currently normalized and the exchange rate has been stable for the last few days," Borislav Brujić from the Association of Exchangers of Serbia tells us.
He claims that money changers have more euros than enough. He also welcomes the decision of the NBS to ban the additional commission. The new average exchange rate as of Wednesday (December 17) is 117,3615 dinars for the euro.
At the disposal of exchange offices is a deviation from the average exchange rate of a maximum of 1,25 percent - they seek their earnings in this margin. But they will no longer be allowed to charge even one percent of additional commission on top of that.
Thus, the NBS intends to prevent citizens from paying more than 120 dinars for the euro, which they consider a "psychological limit". The official average rate has not exceeded that 120 since 2017.
A vivid memory of the nineties
It is not yet known to what extent citizens withdrew money from bank accounts and put it in straw bags, and what the consequences will be. Banker Vladimir Vasić told DW that there were no real economic reasons for the panic.
"But we've seen how human psychology works," he says. "The information about the NIS that people received from state officials, from the opposition, and also from certain media, created the impression that something terrible will happen. When an ordinary person hears this, he thinks that it is best to exchange all the money he has into euros, because it is a stable currency."
That kind of panic is not negligible in a country whose good part of the population remembers hyperinflation, dinars with countless zeros and suspicious guys in leather jackets offering foreign currency in low voices on the street.
"That experience shaped a permanent mistrust of the domestic currency and institutions," says Ivan Stanojević, assistant professor of political economy at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade.
"People's economic behavior is inseparable from their psychological state and emotions. When Vučić intimidates the people for weeks with sanctions, the destruction of the banking sector and general disasters, it is natural for people to feel scared," he added to DW.
And the euro, our interlocutors add, enjoys a significantly higher reputation than the dinar - almost like the German mark used to be. After all, in Serbia, everyone talks about somewhat larger sums in euros, loans and many prices are indexed in them.
What about NIS?
If there was no reason for such a panic, there are certainly reasons for worries about oil supply.
For about seventy days, not a drop arrived via the JANAF pipeline, and the refinery in Pancevo stopped working. As far as the public knows, there is still no agreement on the part of the Russian side with any potential buyer of NIS shares, and there is no will of Washington to make an exception to the sanctions.
Vučić has repeatedly hinted at the possibility of a Serbian takeover of NIS, if there is nowhere to go. On Tuesday (December 16), he announced "important news" for the coming week. "I hope for good news for the citizens of Serbia," said the president.
Previously, he declared January 15 as D-Day, but it is not the first time that he has pompously set deadlines while the country faces a shortage or increase in fuel prices, and potentially turning on the gas tap if nationalization occurs.
"Every two days he sets some deadlines, talks nonsense," an employee of an NIS gas station told the DW reporter. For now, he says, there is fuel and wages are, as always, regular. "But what will happen next, believe me we know as much as the other people who read the paper."
Still a savior?
Vučić's government has been facing mass discontent and protests for more than a year and has received unexpected slaps. The latest is the decision of Jared Kushner's company, Trump's son-in-law, to abandon the construction of apartments, a hotel and a casino on the site of the General Staff.
Along with that comes the announced confrontation with the Prosecutor's Office for organized crime, but also the decline in the popularity of the ruling party, as suggested by some public opinion polls.
That is why political economist Ivan Stanojević believes that the authorities are purposefully creating panic.
"The simplest answer is that only Vučić needs panic. If people are in panic and fear, he can act as a savior and solve crises that he himself caused, as in the case of NIS, or invented, as in the case of the potential collapse of the financial system," he adds.
Those who can't control their panic, these days are probably going to haggle in exchange offices. We asked a money changer in Novi Sad if he could get a slightly better exchange rate if he bargained for five hundred euros. "It can't be. We only give a better exchange rate now for quantities over 4.000 euros," he says.
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