YUGOSLAV ECONOMIC PLAN SEEN FACING HURDLES
Yugoslavia's ambitious economic recovery
and anti-inflation plan faces major hurdles before it can be
implemented, Yugoslav economists and Western diplomats said.
    Prime Minister Branko Mikulic on Monday proposed new taxes
hitting high income earners, moonlighters, property and
interest on savings as part of new government plans to rein in
the country's 123 pct inflation.
    He also proposed price and wage restraint and the trimming
of repayments on the 20 billion dlr foreign debt in line with
currency earning abiltiy.
    "The taxes will anger many Yugoslavs struggling with
soaring prices and will be resisted in Parliament," a Western
diplomatic source said. Yugoslav economists said Mikulic's
draft plans left many questions unanswered.
    "It was a list of goals, not concrete measures," said a
senior Yugoslav economist at a leading Yugoslav research
institute.
    The state news agency Tanjug was more optimistic. It said
the proposals indicated "real economic reforms" were coming.
    Further details of the program, which Mikulic summarised in
Parliament, are to appear in the days ahead, and the draft has
to be debated and voted on by deputies in November.
    "The goals are good," a leading Belgrade economist said.
"No one can argue with that. But the million dollar question,
as with all government programs here, is how they will be
implemented."
    Zoran Popov, senior research fellow at The Belgrade
Institute for Industrial Economy said the existing system made
many of the proposals difficult to put into effect.
    "A change in the the system of taxation requires changes in
the constitution," he said. "Mikulic's speech tells us what he
wants to do, but not how."
    "It may be anti-inflationary," one diplomat said. "But the
question is how can you tax a black economy and how will the
government find out who has two jobs or more than one home."
    Economists and diplomats said the proposals could be
resisted by deputies from several of Yugoslavia's constituent
republics and provinces in defence of regional interests.
    Such resistance has blocked the nationwide implementation
of federal government economic policy on many past occasions.
 Reuter
