The Governor of the National Bank of Serbia, Jorgovanka Tabakovic, announced today that the National Bank expects a growth of exports of goods and services of over 20 percent this year, which would reach around 27 billion euros.
At the presentation of the August Inflation Report, the Governor stated that since the beginning of the year, the Serbian economy has been characterized by a significant correction of the external imbalance.
“After being reduced by more than one third last year, the current account deficit has continued to decline since the beginning of this year, amounting to only 1.8 percent of gross domestic product in the first half of the year,” Tabakovic said.
Having in mind such trends, the NBS, according to her, revised the projection of the current deficit for this year from 4.6 percent to 4.0 percent of the gross domestic product, while the result in the first half of the year shows that a better outcome is possible.
She also stressed that the strong inflow of foreign direct investments continued in Serbia, which amounted to 1.73 billion euros in the first six months, and when the data for July and the first decade of August are added, then the inflow of FDI since the beginning of the year is almost 2.2 billion euros.
Compared to last year, the inflow of FDI, says Tabakovic, increased by 30 percent from January to the end of July.
The Governor added that foreign exchange reserves, which also grew during the pandemic 2020, reached a record 14.6 billion euros from the beginning of this year to the end of July.
“Of that, 1.8 billion euros refers to 36.7 tons of gold that we have in our vaults. I emphasize, in our vaults, because during the previous months we managed to return the last remaining quantities of gold abroad to the country,” said Tabakovic.
She pointed out that we are recording more favorable trends than expected in public finances, where the budget deficit in the first half of the year was significantly lower than projected and amounted to 1.4 percent of GDP.
“Such a result leaves room for the growth of capital investments of the state, which increased by close to 15 percent in the first six months, while their projected level at the level of the year could exceed 7.0 percent of the gross domestic product,” the Governor added.
According to Tabakovic, such movements in the budget indicate that the public debt will certainly remain below the mastic criterion of 60 percent of GDP, Politika reports.
