In April of this year, Minister of Trade Tomislav Momirović signed the Memorandum of Understanding between Serbia and China, which formally started negotiations on free trade between the two countries, and yesterday the two countries signed a Joint Statement for better placement of food in foreign trade.
Although the authorities constantly talk about the improvement of relations between Serbia and China in the field of economy, what is regularly missing are the details related to the specific goods and services included in the given documents.
In this case, considering that the export of food from Serbia to China was almost minimal, the question arises as to what benefits the Statement will bring to the Serbian economy, and what food our country has to offer such a distant country.
According to the data of the Republic Institute of Statistics, during the previous year, Serbia mainly exported meat (about 13 million euros), beverages (1.6 million euros) and tobacco (about 660 thousand euros) to China.
This is confirmed by the fact that the share of food products exported to China in total exports from Serbia to the world is less than one percent, more precisely – 0.34 percent.
As Bojan Stanić from the Serbian Chamber of Commerce explains, boneless beef and cuts with bones are mostly exported to China.
“If the total export of food products was 16.3 million euros the previous year, about 13 million is just meat.” Therefore, we can say that only beef and beef products found their way from Serbia to the Chinese market, which has seen significant growth in the last three years.
Nevertheless, it is a symbolic participation in relation to the entire export to China. Looking at the overall export, which is growing significantly, and which amounted to over one billion euros in 2022, food exports were certainly minimal,” when it comes to food, Serbia records the most exports to the European Union and the Western Balkans market. Therefore, Stanić suggests that the essence of the agreement with China is to attract foreign companies to produce food in Serbia, which in return gives them open access to the Chinese market.
On the other hand, agro-analyst Milan Prostran does not see the Joint Statement as a guarantee that the statistics of food exports from Serbia to China will change for the better, even though our country has certain products that could eventually bear the costs of transportation and the road.
“What can bear the cost of traveling to such a far country are products that have a high price, such as more expensive and better quality wines. In addition, seeds from arable and vegetable crops, corn, wheat and sunflower hybrids. What we could offer to China are vine grafts, for which we were once recognized throughout the world, as well as seedlings for quality varieties of plums and apples. However, it would be good to emphasize the products that we have in large quantities, measured in thousands or millions of tons,” Prostran suggests.
However, our interlocutor reminds us that, despite the fact that the Chinese are friends when it comes to politics, they can be very difficult traders, and complicated and analytical negotiators, who measure every detail, from quality to price.
He is of the opinion that Serbia does not have the capacities corresponding to their needs, but he does not rule out the possibility that this may be an opportunity to relieve Serbia of grain reserves.
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