New restrictive measures against the corona virus are again affecting already unstable economies across Europe, and some of them are important economic partners of Serbia.
“The impact of the lock is undoubtedly negative. There will be a drop in the inflow of orders from those countries, and thus the employment of production capacities will be lower, as well as the volume of export activities,” said Sasa Djogovic, M.Sc., author of the publication “Macroeconomic”.
The extremely bad epidemiological situation in Italy during almost three months from the end of winter and until the end of May this year resulted in a sharp drop in exports to that country.
“Thus, goods worth one billion euros were placed on that market from Serbia in the first three quarters of this year, or by as much as 25.7 percent less than in the same time interval last year,” Djogovic states.
Also, there is a very pronounced rate of decline in the placement of goods on the Montenegrin market at a rate of 17.9 percent.
This is a consequence of the collapse of tourist traffic in that country, which was mostly closed during the spring and most of the summer months, and especially towards the region, from where the main emitters of demand are Montenegrin tourism.
The hope remains that the closure of Europe’s economies, especially those of Germany, Italy and Austria, will not last as long as the beginning of the pandemic.
“Lockdown” is a very bad option for Serbia
As Djogovic says, the epidemiological situation in Serbia is very bad, but another “lockdown” would be disastrous for the domestic economy.
Now, every new lock in the economy, even if it is partial, would reduce the revenues in the budget, and thus expand the budget deficit, which is foreseen in the rebalance to 8.8 percent.
Economists agree that the increase in salaries in the public sector should be waited for, and that a more efficient measure would be a one-time reward for employees, because it would not suffer the budget, Nova Ekonomija reports.
