The government has formed a commission to monitor price trends to help mitigate the impact of the economic crisis, says Trade Minister Slobodan Milosavljević. “The commission will meet for the first time in late July, and ministry representatives have been asked to conduct an analysis of price movements and reasons for changes in prices in their departments in the first six months of the year,” said Milosavljević.

U.S. Steel has announced that it is to ax between 150 and 250 jobs in its administration and parallel departments. U.S. Steel’s communications director, Nemanja Brković, told Beta that the company’s employee structure had been analyzed, and that they were sure that the redundancies were a “necessary step“ towards striking an effective balance between administrative and production personnel numbers both at the Smederevo foundry and the subsidiary in Šabac.

NIS Managing Director Kirill Kravchenko says that the Serbian Oil Industry is currently owed about EUR 320mn. He explained that the company’s receivables had fallen to about EUR 10.6mn, adding that he expected existing receivables to be settled in August.

IMF Deputy Managing Director Murilo Portugal said today in Belgrade it was still early to say whether Serbia has violated its agreement with this organization. He explained that the conditions for the second withdrawal of the IMF stand-by loan, approved earlier this year, will be discussed in August, when an IMF mission is set to visit Serbia.

Serbia’a national air carrier Jat Airways will be flying directly from Belgrade to Dubrovnik, Croatia this summer again after 18 years. According to the official website of Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport, Jat will be flying to Dubrovnik from Belgrade until late August two times a week—on Mondays and Thursdays, and the first flight is scheduled for today.

Energy and Mining Minister of Energy Petar Å kundrić says he expects that a new auditor for NIS will be selected within 30 days. The auditor will carry out the supervision of the oil company’s annual financial report for 2008.

The strikers of the privatized construction company 1. Maj from Lapovo have ended their blockade of a railway line near the town after several hours. The blockade of the Belgrade-Niš line began on Wednesday night and ended at about 03:00 CET on Thursday.

Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković will meet today with IMF Deputy Managing Director Murilo Portugal. The meeting will not have any direct link to the evaluation of whether Serbia has met all the conditions set by the IMF for gaining access to the remaining funds envisioned by the two-year arrangement.

Filling has begun of the Banatski Dvor underground storage facility, with the plan to sifon in a million cubic meters per day, Srbijagas has announced. Srbijagas CEO Dušan Bajatović told a press conference that the plan was for the facility to hold 300 million cubic meters of gas by the winter, which would make five million cubics a day available to Serbian consumers.

The Swedish ambassador says talks are under way between IKEA and the government, and that he believes the furniture giant will be coming to Serbia soon. Speaking to B92, Krister Bringeus said that he could not give any exact dates. “That really is a matter for IKEA and the Serbian authorities,“ he said.

Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković has spoken with bosses at Merrill Lynch about investment in energy and infrastructure, and the possibility of a loan arrangement. Cvetković discussed the three themes with the bank’s Vice Chairman Dick McCormack and the directors of the company’s energy and strategic research departments.

A new competition for receiving funds for the development and revitalization of private and public companies in Kosovo will be called in July. State Secretary for Kosovo Oliver Ivanović said that the Serbian government had set aside EUR 914,000 for 25 companies, who will receive favorable credit terms, paying one percent interest per annum for five years, with a grace period of one year.

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) stated that the government measures for helping electronic media are a good step. But, the organization’s representatives stated in Belgrade on Monday, “it is only the first step”.

Large chains of Russian casinos, which will be put out of business in Russia starting July 1, could be relocating to the Balkans. Belgrade daily Večernje Novosti writes today that the proposal to shut down casinos in Russia came in October 2006 from then president Vladimir Putin. Putin was quoted as saying that gambling is harmful to the Russian people, and compared it to alcoholism.