Last year, the inflow of foreign direct investments amounted to around 4.4 billion euros, while remittances reached a value of as much as five billion euros. By all accounts, this year will be somewhat more modest on both fronts – but not unsuccessful, and the “magic sum” to be exceeded is four billion euros.
According to data from the balance of payments with a cut in September, the value of remittances this year in nine months reached 3.92 billion euros, while only the remittances sent to Serbia by our workers from abroad were worth 2.97 billion euros.
For the sake of comparison, last year in the same period, 3.76 billion euros of remittances arrived, that is, 2.85 billion euros from employees alone. In short, this year there is a growth in remittances of four percent compared to the nine months of the record year 2022.
However, what is visible from about halfway through the year is that the value of remittances is decreasing month by month compared to last year’s results, which the National Bank of Serbia announced in a statement to Biznis.rs when we addressed this topic in May.
For example, during the first two months of this year, 29.5 percent more money arrived in Serbia in the form of remittances than in the same period last year, but the trend reversed in June, when remittances amounted to 383 million euros, which is 30 percent less. than in the same month of 2022.
After a slight increase compared to July of last year, August “declined” again, as 537 million euros arrived, or eight percent less. In September, that minus amounted to 15 percent.
When we asked our central bank in May if they expect the record inflow of remittances set in 2022 to be broken this year, they answered that their projection is that the level of remittances will remain high in 2023 as well.
“We expect, however, that the year-on-year growth rate will decrease in the coming months due to the high base reached in the second quarter of 2022,” the NBS said.
Economist and director of the Institute for Development and Innovation Nenad Jevtović believes that this year’s remittances have already “won” the race to reach four billion euros.
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