Delay in structural reforms and election gifts At the end of 2015, Serbia recorded a budget deficit of 3.8% – a surprising decrease compared to previous years and a value that was 2% below that forecast by the IMF, among others. There were three main reasons for the decline: increased tax revenue as a result…
Category: Serbia
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Serbia Foreign Trade
Historical legacy Serbia’s economy is on the path of transformation and modernization. It is still characterized by a double inheritance. On the one hand, from the socialist legacy, a socialist economic structure and economic policy, the transformation of which, due to the Balkan wars, in contrast to the Central and Eastern European countries, began ten…
Serbia Development Policy
Estimated GDP: US $ 53.0 billion (2019) Per capita income (purchasing power parity): US $ 7,503 (2019) Human Development Rank (HDI): Rank 63 (from 189 – 2019) Proportion of poverty (less than $ 2 per day): 9.2% (2011) Distribution of income (Gini coefficient): 34.0 Economic Transformation Index (BTI): Rank 27 (of 137) (2020) Development goals,…
Serbia Economic Effects of the Corona Crisis
The global corona crisis also changed the economic development dynamics in Serbia in March 2020 almost overnight. The shutdown of public life, the closure of restaurants, retail outlets and traffic routes, the sending of workers home or, in some cases, to the home office all contributed to the drastic collapse in economic output. However, the…
Serbia Economic Reforms
Political struggle for fundamental economic reforms At the end of the election year 2012, with its various traditional tax gifts, the new government was faced with a veritable budget crisis. The budget deficit reached almost 8 percent, the public debt 62 percent of the gross domestic product. In this situation of threatened national bankruptcy, the…
Serbia Structural Economy Problems
Despite considerable reform efforts and the fundamental restructuring of a nationalized, regulated and strongly slumped economy into a modern market economy, Serbia is still facing fundamental structural problems after a decade, which threaten economic and budgetary stability. The public sector in Serbia is still too big. Several hundred companies are not privatized or caught up…
Serbia Industry
After the regime change in October 2000, the transformation and modernization of the Serbian economy and economic policy began with the support of the EU, IMF and other international institutions. Economic legislation was modernized, and foreign trade and the money and foreign exchange markets were liberalized. Administrative prices and wages have been abolished. Most of…
Serbia: International Assistance and Foreign Investments
Economic policy Serbia’s economic policy, especially since the term of office of the pro-European government coalition that ruled from 2008 to 2012, has been shaped by an economically liberal course and the setting of the course for the corresponding transformation and modernization of economic policy and its institutions and instruments. A modern, transparent housekeeping system…
Serbia Foreign Policy and EU integration
Relationship to the West Serbia’s relationship with Germany is a special one. Since 2000, German policy towards the Western Balkans has been strongly fixated on Serbia. This has its origins in the fact that Germany took part in the Kosovo war against Serbia, which was contested domestically, and in Germany’s active support for the DOS…
Serbia Relationship with Montenegro and Albania
The bilateral relationship between Serbia and the neighboring state of Montenegro has traditionally not been free since its separation from the joint confederation in 2006 amid internal tensions in the small Western Balkan country, in which a minority, which makes up almost half of the population, does not identify as Serbia as a Montenegrin and…