BELGRADE: The Serbian parliament approved late Monday a reshuffled cabinet of Socialist Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, tasked with reviving the country's ailing economy and leading it closer to EU membership.
After a three-day debate, the 250-seat parliament approved a reshuffled government cabinet including 11 new ministers -- among them Lazar Krstic, a former McKinsey & Co associate, in charge of finance -- with 134 votes for, 65 against, while 51 deputies abstained.
Dacic told the parliament that Serbia "still faces tough times, an ongoing struggle for a just solution for Kosovo and a halt of the economic decline."
"We have to fight for every single job, for every single cent of investments," Dacic said during the debate.
The reshuffle comes 13 months after Dacic's government, praised for reaching a historic EU-mediated accord with breakaway Kosovo in April, took over.
In July, junior government partner URS, in charge of finances and the economy was kicked out of the cabinet, controlled by Dacic's Socialists and its senior coalition partner Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), for failing to accelerate the reforms needed to revive a deteriorating economy.
SNS leader and Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said the government reshuffle was needed in order to focus on European Union membership talks and the economic recovery.
One of the main goals of the reshuffled cabinet will be to restructure the public sector, a move that would involve privatisations and a streamlined civil service.
The government would need to introduce severe budget cuts, including public administration costs and pensions, deemed necessary by the experts of the International Monetary Fund.
Analysts say the reshuffled government will have same political goals as the previous one, notably further improvement with Kosovo and speeding up the EU membership talks.
"But now the focus is on social and economic issues, the biggest political and social challenges for government," political analyst Dejan Vuk Stankovic said.
Vucic also said reducing the number of jobless people by 50,000 would be one of the targets of the revamped cabinet.
Serbia's economy shrank 1.7 percent in 2012 while unemployment rose to 24 percent.
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