Minister urges "caution with donation figures"

Minister urges "caution with donation figures"

“We need to separate direct grants from loans and look at the conditions under which we will obtain these loans,” said Joksimović.

Joksimović pointed out that part of the money promised for the rehabilitation after the catastrophic floods that hit the two countries in May had already been granted to Serbia for some other purposes earlier, and today, it had only been redirected for flooding disaster recovery.

She pointed out that through the pre-accession funds, the Solidarity Fund and bilateral aid, the EU remained the biggest donor to Serbia when it came to assistance in efforts to handle the consequences of the flooding.

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Director of the Serbian government's Office for assistance and recovery of the flooded areas Marko Blagojević said late on Wednesday that the donor conference in Brussels achieved more successful than expected and that Serbia will use the raised funds primarily for the reconstruction of its energy system and agricultural recovery.

The atmosphere was very positive and a number of small donors appeared than we originally expected, Blagojević told Tanjug toward the conclusion of the Wednesday donor conference to raise aid for Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina which were hit by surging floods in May.

Many donors released only the total amount of aid allocated to the two countries, and a large number of donations mentioned at the conference had already been delivered in the form of bilateral assistance, Blagojević said and added that some countries stated that they are yet to reach a decision on bilateral assistance.

Blagojević said that the donated funds would primarily be used for the reconstruction of the damaged energy system and the agricultural sector, as the fields which suffered the most substantial damage during the severe floods.

Of course, assistance will be provided to small and mid-size companies as well, and some countries offered to conduct turnkey projects, Blagojević said.

He announced that the next donor conference, due in six months, would offer an opportunity to review the work done by that point and see how the funds are being used.

At that point, we will see what we have done and what remains to be done, Blagojević said and warned that a large majority of donors insisted that the fund spending should be made fully transparent.