Serbia used to export, and now imports large quantities of pork, so in 2019 alone it imported about 56,000 tons of frozen pork and paid 71 million dollars for that, said Branislav Gulan, a member of the National Team for the Revival of Serbian Villages.
According to portal 021, he stated that according to the data of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, about 16,000 tons of pork were imported in the first nine months of last year, while two decades ago it earned about 762 million dollars a year from exports.
The price of a kilogram of live weight of pigs is currently “below any price level” and is around 1.1 euros, Gulan said.
He states that the best solution would be to urgently form an export cooperative that would deal with the export of agricultural products.
That would be a transitional solution until a company like Tenex, Progres and other export companies used to be, are created.
At the very end of 2020, the Government of Serbia adopted a decree for the allocation of subsidies in agriculture in 2021 in the value of about 450 million euros, and the introduction of new models for allocating subsidies and support to sectors that have been neglected so far was announced.
Gulan believes that much more must be done for Serbian agriculture, because currently domestic agriculture is not competitive on the world market, and for the last three and a half decades it has had a production growth of only 0.45 percent.
A member of the National Team for the Revival of Serbian Villages also believes that all strategies have not brought the expected results so far and pointed out that 237 million euros of earmarked subsidies were spent for the development of livestock from 2016 to 2018, and there was no improvement in livestock.
He reminded that in 2019, Serbia exported agricultural products for 3.62 billion dollars. Imports were about 2.1 billion, while a surplus of about 1.5 billion was realized, Nova Ekonomija reports.
