Serbia’s merchandise trade reached €39.65bn in the first half of 2026, rising 5.8% year on year, but the more important development lies beneath the headline: exports are expanding more than twice as quickly as imports, narrowing the country’s goods deficit and lifting export coverage to its strongest level in several years.
Exports reached €17.97bn between January and June, an increase of 8.3%, while imports rose a much slower 3.7% to €21.68bn. The resulting merchandise trade deficit fell to €3.71bn, down 14.1% from the same period of 2025. Exports now cover 82.9% of imports, compared with 79.4% a year earlier.
The improvement is economically more significant than the 5.8% growth in total trade suggests.
On comparable calculations, Serbia exported roughly €16.59bn of goods during the first six months of 2025 and imported around €20.91bn. This means exporters generated approximately €1.38bn of additional foreign sales over the past twelve months, while additional imports amounted to around €770mn.
The difference reduced the goods deficit by approximately €600mn in a single year.
For an economy that has traditionally run a persistent merchandise deficit and relied on services exports, foreign direct investment, remittances and other capital flows to finance the external gap, that represents a meaningful strengthening of the trade position.
It is also occurring while economic growth is accelerating. Serbia’s real GDP expanded by an estimated 3.6% year on year in the second quarter of 2026, following 3.2% growth in the first quarter. Industrial production in June was 0.8% higher than a year earlier, while construction activity in the second quarter increased 9% in real terms.
That combination is important.
Improving trade balances sometimes reflect economic weakness because households and businesses reduce purchases of imported machinery, vehicles, consumer goods and energy. Serbia’s first-half numbers are different. Imports are still increasing, but exports are growing significantly faster while domestic economic activity remains positive.
The structure of trade indicates that the improvement is being driven by Serbia’s industrial base rather than a single agricultural or commodity cycle.
Products used for further production accounted for 59.5% of total exports, while consumer goods represented 28% and equipment approximately 12.4%. Imports showed a similar industrial orientation, with intermediate products representing 55.2%, consumer goods 21.1% and equipment 11%.
This is characteristic of an economy integrated into European manufacturing supply chains.
Serbia imports energy, industrial components, machinery and raw materials, processes or assembles a substantial portion of them domestically, and exports vehicles, electrical equipment, metals, machinery and other manufactured goods.
The first-half trade figures therefore remain closely connected to investment decisions made over the previous decade.
Automotive production is one of the clearest examples.
In June alone, wiring sets for vehicles, aircraft and ships were Serbia’s largest individual export product, worth around $177mn. Passenger vehicles followed at approximately $163mn, while motor-vehicle parts contributed another $94mn.
The vehicle figure comes as the Stellantis plant in Kragujevac ramps production of the Fiat Grande Panda, the first electric passenger vehicle produced in Serbia. Stellantis has positioned the model as a global vehicle, with Serbia forming one of the principal production bases alongside additional manufacturing in Algeria and South America.
This matters because the Kragujevac plant historically generated very large swings in Serbian export performance.
During the peak years of Fiat 500L production, automobiles were among Serbia’s largest individual export categories. As production of the old model declined, its contribution weakened materially.
The Grande Panda introduces the possibility that Kragujevac again becomes a significant export engine, but with a different industrial profile centred increasingly on electrified vehicles and the STLA Smart platform.
The effect extends beyond finished cars.
Vehicle production supports Serbian exports of wiring harnesses, tyres, electronic components, metal parts, plastics and other automotive products produced by a large network of foreign and domestic suppliers.
Companies including Yura, Leoni, Continental, Bosch, Michelin and ZF have helped build Serbia into a regional automotive-components platform. This explains why vehicle wiring and parts can remain among the largest exports even when finished-car output fluctuates.
Copper has become the second increasingly powerful export pillar.
Copper ore and concentrates generated around $166mn of Serbian exports in June, while refined copper contributed another $149mn. Together, those two categories alone were worth more than $300mn in one month.
The expansion reflects the transformation of the mining complex around Bor and Čukaru Peki under Zijin Mining.
Serbia Zijin Copper and Serbia Zijin Mining produced a combined 296,000 tonnes of copper in 2025, alongside 9.1 tonnes of gold. Zijin’s current guidance envisages another 296,000 tonnes of copper in 2026, while expansion projects are ultimately targeting combined Serbian copper output of approximately 450,000 tonnes annually.
At that scale, copper changes Serbia’s export geography and industrial structure.
Unlike conventional automotive manufacturing, which depends heavily on European consumer demand and multinational supply chains, copper provides exposure to global electrification, grid investment, renewable-energy deployment and data-centre construction.
Copper prices remain cyclical, meaning high nominal exports can partly reflect commodity-price movements. Yet the underlying Serbian production base is also increasing.
This combination makes mining increasingly important to Serbia’s current account, tax revenues and regional economy.
It simultaneously raises concentration risk.
A growing share of export growth tied to copper means fluctuations in global metals prices or operational performance in Bor can have a measurable impact on national trade data.
Serbia therefore benefits most when copper growth occurs alongside stronger automotive, electrical-equipment, machinery, food and services exports rather than replacing them.
The geographic structure of first-half trade remains strongly European.
European Union members accounted for 58.7% of Serbia’s total merchandise trade, equivalent to roughly €23.3bn during the first six months. Germany remained Serbia’s largest individual export destination, followed by Italy, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary.
On the import side, China ranked first, followed by Germany, Italy, Turkey and Hungary.
The continued dominance of the EU reflects Serbia’s integration with continental manufacturing.
German companies have developed major production operations across automotive components, electrical equipment, machinery and industrial services. Italy remains closely connected through manufacturing and automotive investment, while Hungary has become increasingly important through energy, industrial and logistics relationships.
China occupies a very different position.
It is now both Serbia’s third-largest export market and largest source of imports, illustrating the rapid expansion of Chinese economic exposure.
Exports to China are supported heavily by mining and metals, while Serbian imports include electronics, telecommunications equipment, machinery and a broad range of manufactured consumer and industrial products.
China consequently remains the country with which Serbia records its largest bilateral trade deficit.
That deficit is partly structural.
Serbia imports large quantities of capital goods and manufactured products from China while its export basket towards the Chinese market remains much narrower. Growing copper output helps improve that equation, but it does not eliminate the asymmetry.
Turkey and Poland also remain among the markets generating significant Serbian trade deficits.
The opposite pattern is visible in the Western Balkans.
Serbia generated a €1.59bn trade surplus with CEFTA countries during the first six months of 2026. Exports to CEFTA reached €2.37bn, compared with imports of only €782mn, producing export coverage of approximately 303%.
That surplus is economically substantial.
At €1.59bn, the positive CEFTA balance offsets approximately 43% of Serbia’s entire €3.71bn merchandise deficit with the world.
The Western Balkans therefore remain disproportionately valuable to Serbian exporters despite being much smaller economically than the EU.
Serbia sells cereals, beverages, vehicles, pharmaceuticals, electrical machinery and other products into markets where geographic proximity, language, established distribution networks and free-trade arrangements give domestic companies significant advantages.
Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia are particularly important surplus markets.
With Montenegro, Serbia exports significant volumes of pharmaceuticals and beverages while importing products including electricity. Bosnia and Herzegovina provides another major outlet for Serbian fuels, beverages and manufactured products.
These markets are especially important for domestically owned Serbian companies.
Large foreign manufacturing investors often export mainly into EU supply chains. Serbian food producers, beverage companies, pharmaceutical groups, retailers and industrial SMEs have much stronger commercial positions across the former Yugoslav markets.
Regional trade therefore supports a different layer of Serbia’s corporate economy than exports generated by multinational manufacturing plants.
The first-half improvement should nevertheless be viewed alongside a less favourable development in June.
Serbian merchandise exports reached €3.21bn during June, rising 9% year on year. Imports, however, jumped 17.3% to €3.99bn.
Seasonally adjusted data showed exports increasing 4% from May, but imports accelerated by 12.7%.
This creates a noticeably different picture from the cumulative first-half figures.
During January-May, export growth had been materially stronger than import growth. June showed domestic import demand accelerating much more quickly.
Part of that movement reflects Serbia’s dependence on imported energy.
The country’s largest individual import item in June was crude oil at approximately $214mn. Retail medicines followed at $181mn, while electricity imports reached $82mn, automotive parts around $56mn and natural gas $47mn.
Three of the five major import categories were therefore directly related to energy.
This is particularly important because Serbia’s structural merchandise deficit is not simply the product of excessive consumer imports.
The economy imports oil and gas because domestic production is insufficient. Electricity imports increase during periods when EPS generation cannot fully cover demand. Serbian industry also depends on imported machinery, components and raw materials.
A significant proportion of the trade deficit is therefore tied to the functioning and expansion of the productive economy itself.
Energy remains one of the areas where domestic investment could have the largest effect on future external balances.
Additional wind, solar, hydro and storage capacity would not eliminate electricity trading — nor should it — but it could reduce the need for high-priced imports during periods of weak domestic generation.
Improved refinery and energy infrastructure can similarly affect Serbia’s exposure to imported processed fuels, although crude oil itself will remain predominantly imported.
The increase in June electricity purchases is particularly relevant after Serbia’s gradual shift from a consistently surplus electricity system towards a more import-dependent balance during weaker generation periods.
Trade data increasingly make that energy vulnerability visible in financial rather than purely technical terms.
Every additional €100mn spent on imported electricity or gas appears directly in the merchandise deficit.
The same applies in reverse to new industrial capacity.
A factory producing an additional €100mn of genuinely incremental exports improves the external balance provided it does not require an equivalent increase in imported components.
This distinction is central to evaluating Serbia’s foreign direct investment model.
Headline export values alone do not reveal domestic value added.
An assembly operation can generate substantial exports while simultaneously importing most of the components used in production. Its contribution to GDP, employment and the external balance is determined by the value created inside Serbia rather than the gross invoice value of the final exported product.
This is why deeper supplier localisation matters.
The economic impact of the Grande Panda, for example, will be considerably stronger if Serbian factories produce more components, battery-related systems, electronics, plastics and metal parts locally rather than importing them before final assembly in Kragujevac.
The same applies to machinery, electrical equipment and other FDI-led export sectors.
Serbia’s trade structure is gradually becoming more sophisticated, but the country still imports substantial amounts of capital equipment and intermediate products.
That is not necessarily negative.
Fast-growing economies normally import machinery when companies expand factories and infrastructure investment accelerates. Capital-goods imports can therefore represent future productive capacity rather than immediate consumption.
The question is whether those imports eventually create enough additional export output to finance themselves.
The first-half numbers provide encouraging evidence in that respect because exports are currently growing faster than imports.
The regional distribution of exports also shows that Serbia’s production capacity extends beyond Belgrade.
Vojvodina generated 29.6% of total exports, making it the country’s largest exporting region. Šumadija and Western Serbia contributed 25.4%, Southern and Eastern Serbia 23%, and Belgrade 21%.
Imports are much more concentrated around the capital: the Belgrade region accounted for 43.3% of total imports, followed by Vojvodina at 30.6%.
The difference partly reflects corporate registration and logistics structures, but it also illustrates how geographically dispersed Serbia’s export manufacturing has become.
Vojvodina combines agriculture, food processing, petrochemicals, machinery and foreign-owned manufacturing.
Šumadija includes the Kragujevac automotive cluster.
Southern and Eastern Serbia benefit from copper production around Bor alongside manufacturing centres such as Niš.
This geographic spread reduces the dependence of export growth on a single metropolitan region and distributes industrial employment more widely.
The external position nevertheless needs to be assessed beyond merchandise trade.
Serbia continues to run a structural surplus in services, led by ICT, business services and transport, which offsets part of the deficit in physical goods.
During the first four months of 2026, Serbia generated a €923mn services surplus, an increase of almost 18% year on year. Services exports reached approximately €4.9bn, while imports were around €4bn.
ICT and other professional business activities remain among the strongest components of this higher-value export base.
That means Serbia’s underlying external position is stronger than the €3.71bn merchandise deficit suggests.
A car, tonne of copper or wiring harness appears in the goods statistics. Software development performed in Belgrade or Novi Sad for a US or German client appears in the services account.
Both generate foreign currency and domestic income.
The strongest long-term export model is consequently one where industrial exports and knowledge-intensive services expand simultaneously.
Serbia’s first-half €39.65bn trade figure should therefore be read less as a record in nominal turnover and more as evidence of changing external economics.
Exports rose 8.3% while imports increased only 3.7%. The merchandise deficit narrowed 14.1%. Import coverage improved to 82.9%. CEFTA generated a €1.59bn surplus, while the EU remained responsible for almost three-fifths of total commerce.
At the product level, the emerging structure is equally revealing: vehicle wiring, passenger cars, copper ore, refined copper and automotive components occupy the leading export positions, while Serbia’s major imports still include oil, medicines, electricity, gas and industrial components.
The trade balance is therefore increasingly being determined by two competing forces.
New automotive production, mining expansion and manufacturing investment are adding export capacity. Energy dependence, imported equipment and rising domestic consumption continue to generate substantial import requirements.
June’s sharp 17.3% increase in imports shows that the external adjustment is not complete. Stronger domestic growth and infrastructure investment can easily widen the deficit again when import demand accelerates.
The more durable improvement will come from expanding domestic value added inside the industries already driving exports — particularly automotive manufacturing, copper processing, electrical equipment, machinery, food production and technology services — while reducing the energy imports that continue to absorb a significant part of Serbia’s foreign-exchange earnings.
With exports already approaching €18bn in six months, Serbia has moved well beyond the export structure it had a decade ago. The next stage will be determined less by gross trade turnover than by how much Serbian labour, engineering, energy and locally produced content sits inside every euro of goods the country sells abroad.
