At the sitting on 2 October, the Poverty Reduction Committee discussed the Report on the poverty situation in Serbia. The sitting was chaired by Snezana Stojanovic-Plavsic, Committee Chairperson.

The Report was presented by the representative of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Team for the Implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy in Serbia, Ivana Cirkovic. She stressed that poverty has been on the rise in the first half of 2009 and, according to the Republic Institute for Statistics, 9.2% of the Serbian population is poor. According to the data, children below 14 years of age are among the most endangered, as well as those older than 65, the unemployed, refugees and internally displaced persons.

Ivana Cirkovic reminded the Committee that in 2003, when the strategy was adopted, 14% of Serbia’s population was declared poor, but that the number was halved in 2007 and dropped to 6.6% as a result of the growth of the domestic product and wages and a rise in foreign remittance.

In 2008, poverty rose to 7.9%, and in the first half of this year to 9.2%, as a result of the economic crisis, rise in food prices, energy-generating products and unemployment.

170 laws from different fields, 145 of which have so far been adopted, should contribute to the implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, as a medium term development framework for the reduction of key forms of poverty.

In the continuation, the Committee members were briefed on the activity of the non-government organisation Food Bank, present in Serbia since 2006. According to organisation’s Miroslava Andjelic, the Belgrade Food Bank collects food products from donors and distributes them via the Red Cross, social welfare institutions and soup kitchens to their beneficiaries. 230 food banks in 17 European countries aid over four million people.

57 tons of food had been collected in the 50 food drives so far, which were then distributed to 8110 socially endangered persons. The organisation aims at forming a permanent donor network so as to ensure continued assistance to its beneficiaries, and to expand the programme to encompass as many Serbian towns as possible. The representatives of the Food Bank made several suggestions how to improve the food collecting conditions and regarding benefits for the donors.

The Committee members endorsed the initiative and proposed an analysis of the legal regulations in the countries with a developed practice of this kind so that Serbian legislative may introduce the positive solutions stemming from the good practice.