The Serbian economy incurred a loss of RSD 23 billion last year, a four times smaller sum than in 2012, and losses were greatest in the transportation and warehousing and the processing industry sectors, Ruzica Stamenkovic, registrar at the Serbian Business Registers Agency, said Tuesday.
Presenting Serbia’s economic results for 2013 at a news conference, Stamenkovic said the transportation and warehousing sector had operated at a loss of RSD 62 billion, 2.7 times as much as the loss of the entire economy, in the year.
The processing industry’s losses increased to 41 billion in 2013 from three billion in 2012.
“The reasons for business results being so bad in the two sectors come from their over-indebtedness and inability to cover debts with either operating income or new loans,” said Stamenkovic.
The number of employees in Serbia’s economy fell below one million for the first time last year as the trend of downsizing continued, she said.
Serbia’s economy had a total of 991,030 workers in 2013, 18,970 fewer than a year earlier, she said.
Stamenkovic also said that the reduction in losses for the entire economy in 2013 was a sign of the economic crisis easing slowly, and a modest recovery of the domestic economy could be seen in an annual GDP growth of 2.5 percent.
She said that exports had gone up by as much as one-fourth in 2013 compared to the year before, crucial for bringing the economy, however slowly, back to life again.
“Public enterprises’s losses were 2.2 times the total losses of the entire economy,” Stamenkovic said, adding that last year, the public enterprises in Serbia had had 1,248 more employees than in 2012.
Public enterprises hire 1,248 new employees in 2013
Public enterprises in Serbia increased the number of employees by 1,248 new staff members in 2013 relative to 2012, Ruzica Stamenkovic of the Business Register Agency stated on Tuesday.
Stamenkovic noted that according to the Agency data, 510 public enterprises employed a total of 98,182 people in Serbia in 2013.
The public enterprises registered RSD 51 billion worth of losses in 2013, which is by 6.7 percent less than in 2012, and constitutes a 2.2 percent increase in the total economy loss, Stamenkovic told a news conference.
The cumulative losses of public enterprises in 2013 additionally increased by 22 percent, accounting for 10.4 percent of the total economy loss, she noted.
Speaking about restructuring companies, Stamenkovic said that the companies recorded RSD 48 billion worth of losses in 2013, which is twice the value of total economy loss.
A total of 150 restructuring companies are registered in Serbia and these employ 47,789 people, Stamenkovic said.
Source in Serbia
