A powerful factory rebound is narrowing the trade gap. The strategic question is no longer whether Serbia can export, but how much value its domestic economy retains from foreign-owned plants and imported inputs.
The rebound has a recognisable engine
Serbia entered 2026 with an export story that looked stronger than its headline trade deficit. Final figures put 2025 goods exports at €33.1bn, up 8.4 per cent, against imports of €41.9bn. In the first half of 2026 exports accelerated by 8.3 per cent to €18.0bn while imports rose 3.7 per cent. Coverage improved to 82.9 per cent and the deficit fell 14.1 per cent. This is not a commodity economy that happens to assemble a few cars. It is an increasingly complex production base whose fastest-moving line is transport equipment.
Machinery and transport equipment generated 32.6 per cent of merchandise exports in the first half. Within it, road-vehicle exports more than doubled in dollar terms and motor-vehicle manufacturing produced a $1.65bn sector surplus. The timing points to the ramp-up of Stellantis’s electric Grande Panda in Kragujevac, although customs data do not assign the change to an individual factory. Electrical equipment, rubber and plastics, basic metals and food each added substantial breadth. Serbia is exporting a production system rather than one national champion.
That system has three visible pillars. The first is automotive: Stellantis is surrounded by Bosch, ZF, Brose, Continental, Yazaki, Johnson Electric, Michelin, Toyo Tires and other component and tyre makers. The second is metals and mining: Zijin’s Serbian operations reported 296,000 tonnes of copper and 9.1 tonnes of gold in 2025, while HBIS Serbia anchors steel. The third is a mixed group of food, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, including Hemofarm, which reported a 62 per cent rise in exports in 2025. These names are producers, but also nodes in global groups that allocate orders across countries.
Serbia has proved it can host an export platform. It has not yet proved that the platform will reliably deepen the domestic value chain.
Europe is the customer; China is a narrower but important outlet
The European Union absorbed 63.1 per cent of Serbian exports in the first half of 2026. Germany alone took 15.1 per cent, followed by Italy at 8.6 per cent. Bosnia and Herzegovina accounted for 5.4 per cent, China 5.6 per cent, Hungary 4.5 per cent, Czechia 3.9 per cent and Montenegro 3.8 per cent. The map reflects two different advantages: integration into EU manufacturing chains, and a tariff-light regional hinterland where Serbian food, consumer products, metals and machinery have familiar routes to market.
CEFTA remains disproportionately profitable. Serbia exported €2.37bn to the bloc in the first half and imported only €782mn, producing a €1.59bn surplus and coverage above 300 per cent. Germany and Italy offer scale; Bosnia, Montenegro and North Macedonia offer market power. China is more concentrated. It is a major destination for metal ores and related output but not yet a broad replacement for European demand. Serbia’s export exposure is therefore diversified by country but less so by economic cycle: much of it still depends on European industry and consumers.
The champions are large, foreign and input-hungry
There is no timely official table of exporter market shares by company. The latest widely cited firm ranking, for 2023, placed Zijin Mining Serbia, Zijin Copper and HBIS Serbia at the top, with exports of about €1.15bn, €746mn and €549mn respectively. It should not be read as a 2026 league table: the vehicle ramp-up has altered the mix. It does, however, expose the structural fact that a small set of very large, often foreign-owned plants can move the national numbers.
Foreign ownership is not itself the weakness. It brings capital, quality systems, distribution and access to customers that would be expensive to reproduce. The risk is a thin local multiplier. A factory that imports machinery, electronics and specialised inputs, receives group financing and repatriates part of its earnings can add less domestic value than its gross export figure implies. Serbia’s large free zones show the model clearly: imports and exports rise together as components cross the border and finished goods leave.
Domestic companies are stronger in agrifood, packaging, furniture, software-enabled engineering and selected industrial niches, but they rarely match the scale of the multinationals. The next policy test is supplier upgrading: certification finance, engineering talent, reliable energy and logistics, and contracts that enable Serbian businesses to move from maintenance and simple parts into design, tooling and proprietary products. Incentives tied to headcount alone will not do this.
A better surplus is not the same as resilience
The first-half improvement is encouraging, but the export platform retains three vulnerabilities. European weakness can reduce orders quickly. Energy and technology imports make production sensitive to exchange rates and supply disruption. Finally, metals and vehicle volumes can flatter exports while margins and tax receipts remain elsewhere in the corporate chain. The most useful scorecard is therefore not gross exports alone, but domestic value added, local procurement, R&D employment and the number of Serbian suppliers winning contracts outside the host investor’s plant.
Serbia has moved beyond the question of whether it can attract factories. Its producers now cover electric vehicles, tyres, copper, steel, pharmaceuticals, electrical systems and food. The next phase is harder and more valuable: converting location, wages and incentives into an ecosystem that can survive the reallocation of one multinational production line. Europe will remain the central market. Serbia’s corporate task is to own more of what Europe buys.
