first one was introduced immediately at the beginning of the pandemic and it included : increased healthcare spending, deferment of corporate income taxes, labour taxes and social security contributions for private companies, wage subsidies, financial support for households and a well - designed state guarantee scheme for bank loans to micro, small and mediumsized enterprises. the package was timely and quite large – worth around 11 % of gdp. the second package was implemented in the second part of 2020, and it targeted the sectors that are most heavily hit by the pandemic ( such as tourism and transportation ). the last, third package is from this year, worth around 4. 3 % of gdp. it includes : additional wage subsidies, targeted support to sectors hit hard by the crisis, and 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches financial assistance for households, including the unemployed. it also includes additional healthcare spending and increased public investment, mostly in infrastructure and environmental protection. with all this, after strong negative economic effects of the pandemic in march and april, our economy started to recover in may last year and in most sectors recovery had the v shape. retail trade returned to pre - crisis levels already in june, industrial production in august, goods exports in september. and, like i said at the beginning, our gdp exceeded the pre - crisis level already in q1 this year – and this is one quarter earlier than expected. the labour market proved resilient, with wages and employment in the private sector being higher compared to the period before the pandemic. with all this, we have preserved the basis for serbia ’ s strong and sustainable growth going forward. to conclude, lifting the support measures should be done carefully to avoid cliff effects. but, we must not forget the future risks and costs, so we must prepare credible medium - term policy frameworks. we believe that macroeconomic stability is number one priority, and, as in serbia we have kept it, we can now go further with the reform agenda. thank you. 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches

efforts it has been avoided. according to our estimates, in serbia, if we did not react fast and strong, our gdp would have fallen by more than 6 % last year, and the recovery would have taken three to five years, instead of one. the price of non - responding would have been too high, and it would be measured by undermined stability, lost jobs and lost billions of euros of potential gdp. at the beginning i said that serbia entered the crisis in excellent shape : inflation has been under our control for more than seven years, 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches we have built a strong fiscal position we resolved the npl legacy – npls are no longer an issue in serbia, we increased our fx reserves as a good buffer against external shocks, we strongly improved our external position. i gave just some results because one of the conclusions by all key players is that the countries that had built good fundamentals before the crisis were in a better position to react strongly and swiftly by large and timely support programmes. the national bank of serbia was the first institution in the country to react at the beginning of the crisis. to stimulate the economy, the nbs reacted timely and forcefully, by using different instruments. we lowered the key policy rate four times - to 1 %, and we kept good access to finance and favourable financing conditions for the government, banks and the private sector. the nbs was the lender of first resort in times when this was needed the most. to provide liquidity we used different monetary operations of different maturities and currencies, to send a clear signal that the central bank will be there to support people and companies, and to calm the market and prevent potential panic. we used repo purchase auctions, bilateral outright purchase of government securities in the secondary market, and we also included corporate bonds in collateral for our monetary operations. the nbs was also among the first regulators to introduce a moratorium for all debtors. also, by several measures we additionally facilitated access to financing for our households, especially to housing financing. when it was needed, the nbs intervened in the fx market and kept relative stability of the dinar exchange rate against the euro, as this is one of the most important pillars of the overall macroeconomic stability in serbia. on top of this, our communication was clear – to shocks of temporary nature we respond by temporary measures. when it comes to the government response, we had three well - calibrated packages. the