Innovations against the gray economy - how inspectors find out if the fuel is clean
More than a fifth of Serbia's GDP, about 21 percent, is made up of the shadow economy. Full personnel inspection, digitization and innovations are the fastest way to return several billion euros annually to institutional flows, it was said at the panel "Innovations against the gray economy" organized by NALED.
The quality of fuel in Serbia has been significantly improved by the innovative process of chemical labeling of fuel. That decision brought Serbia one billion and 400 million euros of income in ten years. Marking of fuel with chemical markers can only be detected by special technological - laboratory equipment.
- We have devices that inspectors can take with them and check the tanker on the road or the gas station. If the fuel concentration does not match the marker, we know that something has been added to the fuel. If the inspector notices a problem in Serbia, he can immediately close the pump and thus prevent the sale of bad fuel - said Kevin McKenna, CEO and president of Autentix from Dallas.
The best way to combat the gray economy is a more comprehensive and digitized work of the inspection, which lacks 40 percent of its staff, said NALED's executive director, Violeta Jovanović. In cooperation with the Government, the following were developed: an application for registration of seasonal workers, an online calculator for all those who work in the flat-rate system, a portal for freelancers and an e-inspector system that connects 46 republican inspections, which improved the work of the economy.
- Above all, those who are seasonal, for 130 thousand small businessmen who work in the lump sum system, for thousands of freelancers and businessmen who, thanks to the systems we have set up, can work legally - said Violeta Jovanović, executive director of NALED.
Citizens are also enabled to participate in the fight against the gray economy through the prize game "Get an account and win". The share of the gray economy in Serbian GDP has decreased by a third for a decade, but it still amounts to 16 billion to 18 billion euros, experts say.
- If only one percent of all that was suppressed, calculate that it is about 800-900 million, so that they would enter into normal flows. And that means that the state would receive some 200 - 300 million in the budget, that's some proportions. In other words, it shows that in fact the best investment in this country is the fight against the gray economy - said Petar Stanojević, a professor at the Faculty of Security at the University of Belgrade.
Suppression of the gray economy also enables equal competition among businessmen. The government is preparing a strategy to combat the gray economy until 2035.
