DOES SERB'S POLITICAL ELITE DISGUISE ITS INCOMPETENCE BY INSOLENCE?

Nebojša Katić: About the lazy nation and
stable public finances  

By Nebojša KATIĆ

Nebojša Katić was born in 1955 in the town of Valjevo, Serbia. As an independent business consultant he has been living and working in London since 1992. His “corporate” life has been tied exclusively to the Belgrade’s “Energoprojekt” in which he was, inter alia, CFO of work organization “Energoprojekt-Energodata” and CFO of the holding company “Energoprojekt”. He has finished elementary school “Drinka Pavlović” in Belgrade, then the Fifth Belgrade’s High School, and obtained the master's degree at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade. .

Serbia's drama isn’t in inaction and laziness of its citizens, but in an incompetence, unprofessionalism and the miserable quality of its clueless political, and not just the political elite.

Working Meeting of Nordic Business Alliance and 
Prime-minister Aleksandar Vučić

Shattering outmoded and fossilized democratic principles by which people evaluate the government, not the other way around, the Prime Minister of Serbia, this time in presence of Nordic businessmen, for the umpteenth time, publicly criticized the nation.
Between the situation in which Serbia is in, at present, and Scandinavian-like happy future stands the interference of unadventurous people who have lost work habits and have not learned to be entrepreneurs. According to the Prime Minister's estimate, it takes about a hundred years to change the mentality of the citizens and to get closer to Nordic (Protestant) one, which the prime minister so often and so publicly admires.
It isn’t clear on what basis the prime minister drew conclusions that he showed, nor whether he performed alone or somebody helped him, but the facts do not suit him.

Post-October political elite has decomposed the state, in less than a decade. They managed to destroy and weaken the agricultural industry, managed to destroy the domestic banking system, to destroy the cultural, educational and media areas. The list is long. In this destructive process, hundreds of thousands of people were left without jobs and prospects, and some entrepreneurial Serbs moved and forever left the country, as refugees from the reformer –rescuers.
The only reason why the system works so-so are exactly enterprising citizens which still do not lose hope in general hopelessness. Huge number of people, without exaggeration and pathos, which are in the struggle for daily life and do not give up. All that could be done by acumen, with bare hands, using head, and small investments live and fight, in Serbia.
Service sector in Serbia is fantastically developed and uncovered space virtually doesn’t exist. From craft, medical and intellectual services of all kinds, from trade to tourism, from bakeries and fast food stores to of elite restaurants, from small hotels to hostels, everything is covered and roofed. This sector cannot absorb what the industry released, any more. The competition is ruthless, almost unhealthy.

"I truly believe that the mentality of the people in the 
Balkans needs to be overhauled, which is also in line 
with the differences between Northern European and
Mediterranean nations. The epicenter of this change
is the work ethic, as well as the relationship between
the state and its citizens." Read the speech in full...

What is missing in Serbia are industrial plants and industrial entrepreneurs. In the 21st century, they do not occur overnight and on wasteland, neither resulting in a system that has destroyed what existed and whose customs system opened the door foreign goods, widely.
Industry requires large and long-term investments. Industrial entrepreneurs cannot occur, nor can they survive in a system in which the banking system has no interest to support industrial development, and in which the state is more concerned about the interests of foreigners, than for the interests of local entrepreneurs.
And most importantly, to develop the industry is not the same as going through the field. There is no economic development where there is no clear industrial or agricultural strategy, where there are no defined priorities, nor mechanisms for a strong and systematic support to the domestic economy.
There is no lack of enterprise, but lacks of state apparatus quality, lacks of guidance and assistance the way all the countries that have been successfully developed, do. Only in the atmosphere of the economic naivety and globalist platitude someone could believe that foreigners will develop the country, and they therefore have to be payed to come. This is the road to colonization, not to industrialization.
On the same level of economic naivety is the other Prime Minister's thesis, presented before the Nordic businessmen, as well, that stable public finances were basic condition for progress. They are not. If that was really so, the countries like Afghanistan, Sudan or Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia or quasi-state of Kosovo, would be facing a great economic future, better than Serbia. All of these countries have a lower budget deficit and the lower public debt comparing to Serbia, but it seems that this is not the most important.

Stable public finances: Filip Veličković (92) from the
village of Garaši near the town of Aranđelovac, Serbia
killed by the garbage can lid while he was searching
for food (September 15, 2016.) 

Public finances are important, but their stability could be maintained with a restrictive policy- the miserable salaries and pensions, the poor state of infrastructure, military, health care, education or culture, for example. Dynamic economic development that Serbia still does not have, is the only way to truly healthy public finances. The reverse is not true!
However, let’s go back to the basic thesis from the beginning of the text. People of entrepreneurial spirit are the minority in all societies, while the most of them are conscientious and useful workers whose mental structure is not entrepreneurial. In Serbia will, always, be passive and lazy people who are waiting for the money to fall from the sky, or for someone to bring it straight to their home, but even so, that is not only Serbian personality uniqueness. In Serbia, perhaps more than elsewhere, there are charitable parents who would not have to have their children toiled. But, beside the children from these homes, there are children who work and who are fighting like lions.
Serbia's drama is not in inaction and laziness of its citizens, but in a incompetence, unprofessionalism and miserable quality of its clueless political, and not just the political, elite. There is no rhetoric behind which these basic facts could hide.
[Source: blog "Nebojša Katić – Iz drugog ugla" | Original in Serb's language | Updated: Sep 1, 2016. | Translation to English: LimanGuerrilla]