(Podgorica, 13 March 2012) – The government today announced during a session of the Social Council that it will consider the IMF’s recommendation that it raise the value added tax (VAT) by 2% (from the current 17% to 19%) in order to cover the budget deficit.
In light of the increasingly likely activation of government-backed credit guarantees that were extended to the Russian owners of the Podgorica Aluminum Combine (KAP) – worth some €170-million with interest – it is clear that the planned VAT increase is meant to fill the budgetary gaps that were created by giving credit guarantees to private investors.
We believe this is yet another trick cooked up in the kitchen of Prime Minister Igor Lukšić in an attempt to cover up the fact that it is the citizens who will once again have to pay for the government’s failed policies. This is another perfidious attempt to shift the blame for such a situation onto someone else, this time the IMF.
MANS is strongly opposed to Lukšić’s decision that citizens be forced to bear the brunt of the credit guarantees extended by the government as well as the consequences of its misguided policies. MANS calls on the government to stop protecting the interests of a small number of people tied to the country’s political leadership that have managed to amass an enormous amount of wealth in the past twenty years.
It is clear that for Lukšić the easiest option is to replenish the budget with the money of ordinary citizens, thereby increasing the VAT in order to do so. However, the time has finally come for the burden of the government’s failed policies to be felt by those whom this same government has been protected for all these years.
MANS calls on Lukšić to plug the holes in the budget by starting to finally tax the tycoons (who until now have been allowed to collect enormous profits), as well as seizing the illegally acquired properties of public officials and of those tycoons and criminals linked to them.
Similarly, we call on him to review the criminal privatizations and in this way return to the budget enormous funds that through violations of the law and corruption were handed over to tycoons. He should also begin handing out penalties for the failure to uphold privatization agreements, thus further assisting the liquidity of Montenegro’s state budget.
Lukšić could also restrain his own ministers who are irresponsibly spending the money of citizens in bars, on business trips, as well as for gas, mobile phones and other fringe benefits.
On the other hand, in addition to subsidizing the entertainment of ministers in bars, the citizens of Montenegro are also paying the most expensive electricity, gas, and telephone prices in the region (which in addition to the announced reduction of pensions and public sector salaries, will further reduce the possibility for many of securing a bare existence).
For all of the above, MANS calls on all citizens to join the peaceful protests planned for March 18, in order to show that they no longer want to pay the price of the government’s bad decisions and to subsidize the debts of global and domestic tycoons.
