On the day we spoke with Vladimir Vučković, the work of his former colleagues from Fiscal Council - Pavel Petrović, Danko Brčerević and Slobodan Minić - under the name "Economic development of Serbia: Between institution building and the trap of medium development".
Vučković was a member for 10 years Fiscal Council, and today he is a leading economics lecturer and director of the career development program of the Mokrogor business school.
For the new issue of Vremena, he talks about why a country, after reaching a certain level of development, simply cannot progress further without "thick" changes.
"There is a little progress in terms of transparency, because now in the fiscal strategy and in the budget we have at least listed projects that the state wants to do - now we can see different sections of roads and the like, so we can at least discuss it a little more than before. But the second part - why it is being done - still remains questionable," says Vučković in an interview.
He goes on to explain that no one can be an expert enough, nor should he evaluate every road section, every airplane purchase, every government project, such as the Expo, such as the national stadium.
"It is the state that should prove that we need it, regardless of what we think. But there is no such thing," emphasizes Vučković.
He concludes that "in the best days and periods, we 'revolve' around a growth rate of around four percent. This is also the case in this 'golden sub-period', and if we had better institutions, which include the issue of corruption and the rule of law, it would be five percent without any problems."
"So, one percentage point or 25 percent - that's how much growth would be higher and that much more money would be in the system - that would also make salaries higher - so we can have a more orderly state", indicated the interlocutor of "Vremena".
Read the entire interview with Vladimir Vučković in the new issue of "Vremena", which is on newsstands from Thursday, June 19.
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