Global Policy Forum

By Eve-Ann Prentice

Belgrade - The NATO bombing campaign caused $29.6 billion (£18.8 billion) damage to the Yugoslav economy, according to an independent Serb study. The vast majority of the costs, $23.2 billion, is the estimated loss to Yugoslavia's GDP over the next ten years.

In a bleak forecast of future economic woes, the group of Serbian economists says: "Because of the war and its consequences, industrial production in Yugoslavia will fall by 44.4 per cent in 1999." The group is seen as a reliable source of economic information by many Western diplomats in Belgrade. The cost to the country's infrastructure is put at $4.1 billion, while the human toll caused by deaths, injuries and unemployment is estimated to be $2.3 billion.

The study says that alliance bombs caused $2.77 billion in damage to factories, oil refineries and other industrial facilities; $355 million to the transport system; and $270 million to power plants. Exports are expected to nose dive by 54.8 per cent this year and imports by 58 per cent. "Between 200,000 and 250,000 people have been left jobless due to the direct and indirect consequences of the destruction of large industrial facilities in Serbia," the report says.

The study goes on to predict a dire future for Yugoslavia unless massive foreign aid is injected into the economy. It calls on the Yugoslav Government to reform its legal and currency systems to instil confidence among potential foreign investors.

"Taking into account that the current Serbian and federal governments do not enjoy the credibility either within the country or abroad, the prospects do not look very bright," the study says. "One also wonders whether the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the horrible inter-ethnic wars would have happened had its last Prime Minister, Ante Markovic, received loans from the West of only $4 billion. That amount might have changed the history of this region."