The revised budget for 2016, which was prepared in the Cabinet of former Deputy Prime Minister Vujica Lazovic after the parliamentary elections, has doubled the subsidies for electricity to socially vulnerable people and workers’ severances. Thus, instead of the originally planned €5.1 million, as much as 10.5 million will be paid for these purposes by the end of the year.
Official data held by MANS Investigation Center and the daily Vijesti simultaneously show that this increase was not planned in the budget revised in July this year, at the time when the Ministry of Finance was headed by a minister from the Government of Electoral Trust Rasko Konjevic.
The Government projected the sum of €2.1 million for the payment of subsidies to the cost of electricity for socially vulnerable people in the election year, and according to the Ministry of Economy, almost the entire sum, a little less than two million, had been paid out in late April and early May, just before the opposition controllers joined the Government of Electoral Trust.
The budget revision in July 2016 did not envisage any increase of the subsidies for electricity. However, in November, a month after the parliamentary elections, the government established a different revision of the budget, which doubled the subsidies and increased them by additional €2.5 million.
In addition to subsidies for electricity, the revised budget created by Lazovic doubled the funds for the severance payments. Thus, for these purposes, the budget for 2016 envisaged €3.3 million, a figure that was not changed in the July draft amendments to the budget law. However, in November, after the elections were held, the sum was increased to six million.
When this figure is compared with 2015, a non-election year, in which €2.3 million was allocated for the severance payments, it turns out that the payments on that basis will be increased by two and a half times in 2016, a year of elections.
Severance payments of less than €2,000 are paid to workers whose companies ceased to operate until 2009. The „Tape Recording“ affair has revealed that severance payments to workers is one of the important mechanisms that the ruling party in the previous election cycles used to influence voters’ decisions.
Graph shows increased subsidies and severances in the revised budget
Increased number of beneficiaries of electricity subsidies
Number of socially vulnerable persons who receive subsidies for electricity costs increased by 1,339 in the first ten months of 2016.
Data from the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare show that in January 2016, there were 18,782 registered beneficiaries, while by the end of October the number increased to 20,121.
Authors:
Ines Mrdovic
Tina Popovic
This text is created with the support of the European Union and the U.S. Embassy Podgorica. Network for Affirmation of Non-Governmental Sector – MANS is solely responsible for the contents of this article, and the views taken herein shall not in any case be considered as those of the European Union.
