German industrial group Bosch said it has invested 52 million euro ($62.2 million) in Serbia since it set foot in the Balkan country in 2006 and has become one of the country’s top exporters.
In 2016, Bosch invested some 10 million euro in Serbia and generated net sales of 168.2 million euro, including internal deliveries to affiliated companies, Bosch Serbia said in a statement on Monday.
Sales to third parties on the Serbian market amounted to 38.4 million euro last year.
The company now ranks eighth on the list of the 15 largest exporters published by the Serbian finance ministry, Bosch said.”We expect to continue our positive development in Serbia also in the years to come,” the general manager of Bosch Serbia, Jovanka Jovanovic, said in the statement. “In line with this, we significantly increased the investment in our local manufacturing facilities, in our activities within the information and communication technologies sector, as well as into the development of our Serbian workforce.”
The expansion of the dual education programme will be among next year’s priorities, Jovanovic added.
The company also said it currently has about 1,000 employees in Serbia, a number that has almost tripled in less than three years and is expected to increase further. Bosch has doubled the output and the number of employees at its wiper system factory in Pecinci, in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, since the launch of the factory five years ago.
The exports of Bosch Serbia totalled 103.7 million euro in the first seven months of 2017, according to data of Serbia’s finance ministry.
