Last year, the economy of Serbia achieved a total profit of 864.2 billion dinars (7.4 billion euros), which is 26.3 percent more than the previous year, according to the Annual Report on Business Operations in 2022 published by the Economic Registers Agency.
Companies that operated positively last year made a profit of 1,239 billion dinars (about 10.5 billion dinars), 28.3 percent more than in 2021, but the loss recorded by companies that went into the red increased to 374.8 billion dinars (about 3.2 billion euros), which is a third more than in 2021.
In total, at the level of the economy, revenues were higher by 19.2 percent than the previous year, while expenditures increased by 18.8 percent. Faster growth of income than expenses led to an improvement of the business result by 25.8 percent to 1.14 billion dinars (9.7 billion dinars).
At the same time, a loss of 46.7 billion dinars (398 million euros) was made from financing, which is 28 percent less than the previous year, but that is why the result from other activities increased fivefold to 44.1 billion dinars (376 million euros).
In a year when, after ten years, we saw a big jump in inflation, an average of around 12 percent in 2022, several areas recorded significant profit growth.
The largest profit in 2022 was achieved by the Wholesale and Retail trade sector. This sector achieved a net profit (after tax paid) of 214.2 billion dinars, which is 26.4 percent more than the previous year.
Profitable traders improved their results by 17.8 percent, while losers reduced their losses by 20 percent.
The manufacturing industry achieved a net profit of 197.2 billion dinars, but this is worse than in 2021 by 5.3 percent. This is the result of a significant jump, by as much as 52.9 percent, in the amount of losses incurred by loss-making companies from this sector, while profits increased by 8.8 percent.
Companies from the mining sector had the relatively highest growth in profitability last year. The total net profit of mining increased by 146.7 percent compared to 2021 and almost reached the profit of the processing industry (196.8 billion dinars), although business income is even 5.7 times lower than in the processing industry, which testifies to the incredible profit margin that mining companies achieved last year. At the sector level, net profit amounted to 24.5 percent of business revenues.
The only sector that recorded a loss of 42.6 billion dinars (363 million euros) is the supply of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning. The loss increased by 6.7 times compared to 2021 and is primarily the result of the EPS loss last year.
Agriculture (57.7 percent), transport (94.7 percent) and construction (44 percent) also recorded significant profit growth.
Large companies made a profit of 42.8 billion dinars, as much as 52.7 percent of the total profit of the economy last year, which is an incredible 67 percent increase compared to the previous year.
Profit growth was also recorded by small and micro enterprises, while only medium-sized enterprises decreased their profit by 15.9 percent compared to the previous year.
Public enterprises, on the other hand, recorded losses of 74.8 billion dinars or 637 million euros last year. This is ten times more than the year before and is primarily a consequence of the energy crisis.
Along with the increase in profit last year, the indebtedness of the economy also increased, as well as the amount of the accumulated loss.
The cumulative loss of the Serbian economy at the end of 2022 reached 3,906 billion dinars (33.3 billion euros). Of which EUR 14 billion is a loss above the amount of capital. However, due to the growth of the company’s capital, the rate of lost capital decreased from 34 percent to 32.9 percent last year.
The total liabilities of the economy in 2022 increased by 11.1 percent and reached 113.5 billion euros, while own sources of financing amounted to 68 billion euros. This means that the financing of the company’s operations is predominantly from borrowed sources, and the total indebtedness of the economy has also increased, while the ratio of own capital has fallen to 37.4 percent.
Lending activity increased during 2022, so total loans granted to the economy amounted to 6,221 billion dinars or 53 billion euros, which is 8.3 percent more than the previous year.
At the end of last year, 135,490 companies were operating in Serbia, and based on the analysis of the financial reports of 108,856 companies, the economy employed 1,281,412 million workers, 5,375 more than in 2021.
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