One of the less visible but more important shifts in Serbia’s external accounts during 2025 came from the services side of the balance of payments. For years, the surplus in services has helped soften the pressure created by Serbia’s structural merchandise trade deficit. Strong exports of ICT, business, and professional services have acted as a stabilizing force, partially offsetting the country’s dependence on imported goods and industrial inputs. In 2025, however, that cushion weakened. The services surplus fell materially, and one of the main reasons was the sharp rise in net tourism outflows.
In the first eleven months of 2025, Serbia recorded a services surplus of €1.923 billion, which was €511.5 million, or 21.0%, lower than in the same period of the previous year. This was one of the key reasons the current account deficit widened to €3.480 billion. The deterioration did not come primarily from weaker goods exports, which were still growing, but from the fact that services were contributing less support than before.
The most striking element inside that services story was tourism. Net outflows related to tourism reached €1.721 billion in the first eleven months of 2025, which was €769.4 million, or 80.9%, higher than a year earlier. That is a very large change in a single year, and it says something important about the structure of Serbian household and service-sector demand. Serbians were spending significantly more abroad on travel and tourism-related consumption than foreign visitors were bringing into the country through tourism receipts.
This matters because tourism is often treated as a secondary or lifestyle category in macroeconomic discussion, when in reality it can have a material effect on the external balance. In Serbia’s case, the widening net tourism outflow became large enough to reduce the stabilizing role of services in the balance of payments. Put simply, a larger share of Serbian income was being spent abroad on travel, accommodation, leisure, and related services, and that outflow was not being matched by equivalent inbound tourism earnings.
The broader economic meaning of this shift is quite revealing. Rising tourism outflows can be interpreted in several ways. At one level, they may reflect stronger household purchasing power among segments of the population able to spend more on foreign travel. They may also indicate a normalization of international travel behavior after earlier periods of disruption and caution. But from the standpoint of the balance of payments, the interpretation is more direct: more domestic purchasing power is leaking into foreign service economies.
That leakage becomes especially important in an economy like Serbia’s, where other parts of the external account are already structurally under pressure. The goods balance remains in deficit, and primary income outflows linked to foreign-owned capital remain large. Under those conditions, the services balance plays an outsized macroeconomic role. When it weakens, the whole external structure becomes less comfortable.
This is why the rise in tourism outflows during 2025 should not be dismissed as a marginal phenomenon. It was one of the principal reasons Serbia’s current account deteriorated despite continued growth in goods exports. The economy was still generating export revenue, especially through manufacturing, but more of that gain was being offset by higher service spending abroad and by continuing outward flows of investment income.
There is also a structural dimension to the tourism imbalance. Serbia has developed certain tourism segments, especially urban, event-based, spa, mountain, and transit-related tourism. Yet it remains far from being a services economy in which inbound tourism generates foreign-exchange earnings on a scale capable of materially transforming the current account. Inbound receipts are meaningful, but not enough to counterbalance the growing appetite of Serbian residents for spending abroad.
This asymmetry reflects both supply and positioning. Many Serbian travelers choose foreign destinations not only for leisure but also for shopping, transport connectivity, coastal access, and package-tour offerings that are structurally stronger in neighboring and Mediterranean markets. On the inbound side, Serbia attracts visitors for business, city tourism, and regional travel, but it does not yet operate at the same scale or price power as larger tourism economies in Southern Europe.
The result is a pattern familiar to many middle-income economies: rising domestic demand for outbound tourism develops faster than the country’s ability to earn from inbound tourism. That creates a widening services leak just as households become more mobile and externally oriented in their consumption behavior.
The macroeconomic timing of this in 2025 is especially important. Serbia’s export sector was performing relatively well in nominal terms. Total exports reached €33.068 billion, and foreign trade turnover climbed to €74.927 billion. Manufacturing continued to dominate exports, and automotive production gave the external sector an important push. Yet even with that export strength, the current account still widened because some of the gains were diluted by weaker services support and stronger tourism outflows.
This shows that export growth alone is not enough to secure external improvement if parallel demand leakages are rising elsewhere. The external account is not determined only by factories and trade flows. It is also shaped by how residents consume services, where they travel, and how income is allocated between domestic and foreign service providers.
Another notable point is that the decline in the services surplus happened despite continued growth in one of Serbia’s strongest service-export areas: telecommunications, computer, and information services. Exports in that category rose by €368.7 million, or 9.9%, in the first eleven months of 2025.
That means the deterioration in the services balance was not caused by broad-based weakness across all service exports. On the contrary, some of Serbia’s most competitive service segments were still growing. The problem was that tourism outflows rose so sharply that they overwhelmed much of that improvement.
This is an important distinction for economic analysis. Serbia did not lose competitiveness in services across the board. It experienced a specific imbalance inside the services account, where outbound tourism spending expanded much faster than the country’s capacity to offset it through other service inflows.
That suggests the issue is not a collapse of the service economy, but rather a mismatch between the composition of Serbia’s service earnings and the composition of Serbia’s service spending. High-value ICT and information services are growing, but household and leisure spending abroad is also rising rapidly. These are different parts of the economy, driven by different actors, yet they meet inside the balance of payments.
There is a social and structural subtext here as well. Rising outbound tourism can indicate an aspirational consumption pattern associated with urban middle-income households and stronger foreign-exchange confidence. But from a macro perspective, it can also reflect an economy in which consumption upgrading is running ahead of external rebalancing. Residents are able and willing to spend more abroad, while the domestic economy still depends on imported goods, foreign-owned industrial production, and remittance-supported consumption.
That combination can be manageable, but it does make the macro structure more externally sensitive. If tourism outflows keep rising strongly, Serbia will need either stronger service exports, higher goods-export value added, or more inward tourism receipts to prevent this channel from becoming a more persistent drag.
The policy implications are therefore broader than tourism policy alone. On one level, Serbia could seek to improve the quality, marketing, and foreign-currency earning capacity of its tourism offering. More inbound tourism would help narrow the imbalance and create a stronger domestic service-export base. But the issue also connects to competitiveness in aviation, transport links, hospitality standards, destination branding, and seasonal diversification. Without stronger inbound earning capacity, the economy may continue exporting household purchasing power through foreign travel at a faster pace than it can recapture it through tourism receipts.
There is also a balance-of-payments management angle. In a year when net foreign direct investment fell sharply and current-account pressures increased, losing part of the services cushion to tourism outflows makes the overall external structure less resilient. It does not create a crisis by itself, but it reduces the room for error elsewhere. If goods exports slow, or if primary income outflows rise further, or if financing inflows weaken again, then a structurally weaker services balance becomes more problematic.
This is why tourism outflows deserve more analytical attention than they usually receive. In 2025, they were not a side story. They were a major channel through which the external balance worsened. The rise to €1.721 billion in net tourism outflows was large enough to materially reduce the services surplus and to contribute directly to the wider current-account gap.
That makes tourism not just a cultural or household-consumption category, but a macroeconomic variable. In Serbia’s case, it has become one of the more visible examples of how external imbalances can widen even in years of healthy export growth. The economy was producing more and exporting more, but it was also spending more abroad on services.
The broader lesson is that Serbia’s external balance is being shaped by both industrial competitiveness and consumption behavior. Factories, software exports, remittances, dividend outflows, and tourism spending all interact inside the current account. In 2025, tourism outflows became one of the clearest reminders that macroeconomic stability depends not only on what the economy produces, but also on where its income is ultimately spent.
