Most of the most important economic branches in Serbia reduced production and exports in 2022, and such a trend continued this year as well, according to the edition of BUSINESS TOP 2022/23, published by the economic monthly Business and Finance.
As they explained, the biggest concern is the growing decline in domestic private investments, which in 2022 will be reduced to around seven percent of GDP.
“The most responsible for this is the state policy that persistently forces foreign investors, causing long-term damage to the most competitive part of the Serbian economy,” this edition states.
The annual edition of BUSINESS TOP publishes a ranking list of the 150 largest companies in Serbia in 2022, according to realized profit and business income, as well as a ranking list by district according to realized profit and business income, based on data from the Agency for Business Registers (APR ).
Dependence on a small number of large companies
The operations of large companies had the greatest impact on the results of the entire economy, and how concentrated the domestic market is shown by the data that only one hundred companies generated almost 30 percent of total business income, more than two fifths of the total profit and over half of the total loss, according to this edition.
In 2022, total investments recorded a slight decline (0.3-0.4 percent), foreign direct investments increased by more than 20 percent, and public investments stagnated in real terms. It follows that domestic private investments, for which there are no direct statistics, fell to around seven percent of GDP, according to the analysis of the working group of the National Convention on the European Union, published in the BUSINESS TOP edition.
State policy is largely responsible for this decline, as it has been persistently forcing foreign investors for years, causing long-term damage to the most competitive part of the Serbian economy, the analysis concludes.
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