Features: A love hate relationship with Milosevic
THE Yugoslav economy has been smashed by Nato bombardment to the kind of primitive conditions that existed at the end of the Second World War, according to official figures released in Belgrade.
As Tony Blair and other leaders gave warning that the West will not pay to rebuild the country until Slobodan Milosevic is removed from power, Serbs say they are facing an economic crisis of unprecedented severity.
Officials say that there are now 500,000 workers out of jobs, an unemployment rate of about 27 per cent, with concealed unemployment at 50 per cent. The elderly have been told that their pensions will be frozen, and payments are now irregular.
At the latest count, Nato aircraft had destroyed at le$st 50 bridges, six trunk roads, and five civilian airports. Belgrade says 20 hospitals, 30 health centres, 190 educational institutions, and 12 railway lines have been badly damaged.
Yugoslavia’s ability to manufacture cars has been entirely eliminated with the destruction of the Zastava factory in Kragujevac, which has in turn left 120 contractors facing bankruptcy. While the Yugo cars produced at Zastava were perhaps unlikely to find an enormous market in the West, the demolition has fuelled Serb suspicions that one of the objectives was to open up Yugoslavia to foreign acquisition.
A month ago the oil giant Petrohemija was one of the pearls of the Yugoslaav economy, its value estimated by Western accountants at about £600 million. The company’s reservoirs are now all but destroyed.
Yugoslavia’s two largest oil refineries,at Pancevo and Novisad, have been bombed to the ground, in addition to the Yugopetrol warehouses. The effect has been increasingly to pastoralise the economy, with agriculture rising from 35 to 50 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, although farmers are said to be suffering from popular fears about the poisoning of food.
The price of garlic has fallen to one dinar, from three dinars before the bombing began, and other vegetables have shown similar depreciation. The total bill is estimated by Yugoslav economists at between £30 billion and £60 billion, and Yugoslavia will inevitably try to claim war damages from Nato.
Some officials are already planning on the basis that they will receive no such help, and are drawing up “work drives” to rebuild bridges and roads, similar to the reconstruction which took place after the Second World War.
The reality is that sanctions and 10 years of Milosevic-style socialism had already done huge damage to the Yugoslav economy. Even before the Nato bombing commenced, economists forecast that Serbia would not achieve 1990 levels of productivity before 2015.
In their campaign for reparations, the Serbs also face the problem that they are held by many in the West to be financially responsible for the cost of the Albanian exodus and attendant humanitarian disaster.
