Speech of the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Mr. Igor Lukšić, PhD., at the Finance and Economy Ministers Meeting organized within the regional initiative of the cooperation process in South East Europe

It is my great pleasure to have the opportunity to exchange views and experiences on the current economic developments with my colleagues in the region, and through an open debate to jointly review the economic, fiscal and current policies of international financial institutions and future trends in the worlds economy. The crisis is almost the worst thing that could have happened to the world, revealing all vulnerability of the economic systems, large layoffs, increase in unemployment, decline in industrial and other sectors, great dilemmas and open questions. All events which one serious country could not just ignore pursuing for the well-designed response. Simultaneously, it identified the misallocation of resources generated due to excessive monetary expansion over the past 20 - 25 years with a significant increase in prices of all forms of property. The crisis was a good indicator, indicating the ability of countries to adapt to new economic conditions and to adopt solutions that will ensure recovery of our economies. What the entire world, professional and political public has recognized as the most important aspect of overcoming the crisis was to improve liquidity in all structures of the economy. This was almost the uniform measure of all economic policies, and it was just the question of whether a country is able to provide its own liquidity, loans from international financial institution or the IMF, which during the crisis experienced its renaissance. Now, when most of the countries are experiencing or generating moderate recovery, and when the crisis is almost the past tense story, it is a good opportunity to summarize what has been achieved and to focus future policies to the new recovery cycles of economies. And that the economic history of the last three years is to be recorded as the world economic phenomena. What was the most challenging for my country, and I believe for the policies of other countries is to implement painful, but necessary fiscal adjustments and to lead a policy that does not deviate from the long-term economic objectives of the state, maintain competitiveness and attractiveness of the economy, to continue with the measures aimed at improving business environment, so that the new capital inflow in years after the crisis, in the first investment wave, could strike our country. And so that the small and medium – sized business could gradually take over the dominant share in GDP over the large systems. The measure of success from the perspective of the next 10 years will be the consistency of the structural pension system reforms, investment in knowledge, health and other social policies. In my opinion the improvements in business conditions is as an important objective of the future regional and national economic policy to which my country is extremely committed to, being achieved through the institutions of the system and the establishment of new legal solutions...