University Professor: Vucic Spends Almost EUR2 Billion on Buying Votes

Goran Radosavljevic (Photo: PrintScreen YouTube)

A professor of the Faculty of Economics, Goran Radosavljevic, stated on Jan. 26 that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had spent almost two billion euros from the state budget on buying votes ahead of the forthcoming elections in April.

Radosavljevic explained in the interview to BETA that the Serbian government had spent around 1.4 billion euros from March 2020 to date, on single-instance aid payments to various categories of the population.

"Add to this around 100 million euros in aid to young people, the distribution of which is currently in progress, the 100 million that the president has promised 'if they win the elections in April' and around 300 million euros in assistance to pensioners that has also been announced. All this adds up to the, probably not the final figure, of 1.9 billion euros," the professor stated.

In his words, not only was this money not planned in the Law on the budget – there was actually none of it. "We had to raise additional loans in order for it not to turn out that the president is deceiving the citizens. Therefore, we had to raise an additional loan for this 1.9 billion and that loan will have to be paid back with interest. Assuming that the average interest rate on the loans that we took from March 2020 to date is around two percent, the Serbian citizens will be paying around 200 million euros in interest in the next five years, just for this loan," the professor explained.