In the past year, the Ministry of Economy has provided jobs for 9,500 workers in 49 new or expanded factories. Through financial support programs, 93 million euros were invested in medium and small companies and the trend of direct foreign investments continued.
The German company Brose invested 180 million euros in modern plants in Pancevo and employed the first 400 of the planned 1,100 workers.
The director of the Brose company, Roman Strakos, says that Pancevo attracted them as an industrial city, known for its great potential and qualified experts, as well as the proximity of Belgrade, where renowned universities are located.
“We have started cooperation with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, and we will bring their students to practice here. We will need programmers, engineers and managers in production and logistics,” Strakos points out.
The tradition in the automobile industry brought the German AFT to Priboj and a job for 400 people.
“In the coming years, given our technological advantage in the field of electromobility, we will expand and use it further,” said Dirk Kramer, owner of AFT Holding Priboj.
The Canadian Magna arrived in Aleksinac at the right moment, when the dismissal of workers began in Gramer, which also produces car seats. Thanks to their experience and qualifications, they got a chance for new employment, as did their unemployed fellow citizens.
Investments that are of great importance for entire regions were in Jagodina, Novi Sad and Zrenjanin, where a car tire factory is being built.
“Specifically, I mean the benefits of employing 1,200 workers, through taxes that remain on the state and the city annually in the amount of over 5.5 million euros,” said the mayor of Zrenjanin, Simo Salapura.
The economy of the Šumadija district records a significant increase in production, and the largest industrial park is expanding.
The director of RPK Šumadija and Pomoravlje, Predrag Lučić, first of all mentions the beginning of Škoda’s activities in the Mind Industrial Park, as well as further intensive activities that Siemens mobility has in this territory, RTS writes.
“In that sense, we can definitely expect further intensive growth in the production of parts of rail vehicles, as well as finished rail vehicles, ie trams,” says Lucic.
Officially, new investments have contributed to the reduction of unemployment, but the salaries of production workers, according to which the demands are great, often do not exceed the minimum, so the past year was marked by the lack of domestic labor of almost all profiles.
According to the official data of the National Employment Service, 18,000 work permits were issued to foreign citizens, and according to experts, 2021 was a successful year for the Serbian economy to recover from the previous one, which was hit by the crisis caused by the pandemic.
Economist prof. Dr. Igor Mladenović says for RTS that the fact is that there are positive trends.
“These positive trends are the result in the area of increasing the gross domestic product, also from the point of view of increasing the export of the Serbian economy,” Mladenović believes.
New investments are a good basis, 26.8 percent higher growth of industrial production compared to 2020, as well as 76 infrastructure projects in 56 municipalities and cities across Serbia, Biznis reports.
