In 2020, Serbia exported agricultural and food products for 4.14 billion dollars, which is a record growth of exports at a rate of 14.4 percent, according to the analysis of agricultural analyst Vojislav Stankovic, published on the Agrosmart portal. At the same time, imports of such products amounted to 2.3 billion dollars, at a growth rate of 8.8 percent.
The surplus in foreign trade of agricultural and food products in 2020 was higher by 20.5 percent, or 312.7 million dollars, than in 2019 and amounted to 1.84 billion dollars, with a rate of coverage of imports by exports of 180 percent, it is shown in the analysis.
Stankovic estimated that such good export results were mostly contributed by successful agricultural production, whose gross value amounted to 5.8 billion dollars (growth rate of 4.61 percent), while the net value was 4.8 billion dollars (growth rate of 5.11 percent).
It was stated that the most important products of agricultural origin in exports in 2020 were corn, which was exported to Serbia for 621 million dollars, and then frozen raspberries, which were sold on the foreign market for 296 million dollars.
He added that the most imported were tobacco, for 79 million dollars, bananas worth 62 million dollars, and frozen pork, for 58 million dollars.
Referring to the development of livestock production, based on available agroecological potentials, Stankovic believes that it can positively affect structural changes in agriculture, especially in crop production, ie the adjustment of the structure of appropriate agro-industrial production.
Livestock in Serbia today, despite extremely favorable natural conditions, is in a great crisis, Stankovic emphasized and stated that the number of cattle in the last decade has decreased at an annual rate of two to three percent, that meat production from 600,000 tons in the 1990s century fell to 517,000 tons.
At the same time, the annual consumption of meat was reduced from 65 kilograms to about 50 kilograms per capita, Stankovic said, Nova reports.
