The current economic crisis embodied in high inflation and the same interest rates did not prevent foreign investors from continuing to invest in our country. According to the forecasts of the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) for 2023, “foreigners” will invest even more than four billion euros.
According to officially published data for the nine months of 2023, the inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI) amounted to 3.228 billion euros, of which 2.987 billion euros were net FDI, which is an increase of 8.1 percent year-on-year. Preliminary data for October show that this inflow, observed since the beginning of the year, exceeded 3.7 billion euros as of October.
“NBS conservatively projects inflows of foreign investments and, according to our last projection for this year, an inflow of about four billion euros, or about five percent of gross domestic product GDP, is projected. However, developments in the course of the year so far and our new estimates for the remaining part of the year indicate that this inflow will almost certainly be greater than projected, that is, it will exceed four billion euros”, the central bank says.
According to the latest publicly available data, which refer to inflows during the first two quarters of 2023, the largest inflow was recorded from European (65.8 percent) and Asian countries (32.3 percent).
Observed by country, during the first two quarters of 2023 the largest inflows were recorded from China (€592.6 million), the Netherlands (€414.7 million), Romania (€124.5 million), Great Britain (€122.5 million ), Germany (EUR 117.1 million) and Austria (EUR 113.6 million), while it should be borne in mind that significant investments can come from the Netherlands and because some foreign investors realize their investments from subsidiaries in the Netherlands due to tax incentives , even though the headquarters of the parent company is in another country.
In the period 2018–2022. the share of the inflow of foreign direct investments in the gross domestic product was 7.5 percent on average, while in 2022 that share was 7.3 percent. The projection of the NBS participation for 2023 and 2024 is between five and six percent, if the growth of the nominal gross domestic product is taken into account, and these projections are conservative, so that in previous years the realized net inflow was, as a rule, higher than the projected .
At the same time, this projected FDI inflow for 2023 and 2024 should also exceed the projected current account deficit many times over, which contributes to the sustainability of Serbia’s external position, according to the NBS.
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