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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia fulfills more than 40% of White Book recommendations

Belgrade, 13 November 2019

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic today expressed her satisfaction that our country was able to fulfill more than 40% of the White Book recommendations, saying it was a good result, but that it could have been and better.

Brnabic said at the presentation of the White Book 2019 that 41% of the recommendations fulfilled this year are the best result since 2011, since the success in the percentage of the recommendations implemented by the members of the Foreign Investors Council has been measured.

She expressed satisfaction with the result but added that we are not happy because this is still not good enough.

The Prime Minister pointed out that the government formed a Working Group for the implementation of the recommendations from the White Book of the Foreign Investors Council, which established a different dynamic of implementation of reforms and constant communication with businessmen.

We will be better next year, as there are some areas where, according to the report, there has been no progress, but the government has already adopted bills and sent some of them to the parliament, so those areas will soon be changed for the better, she explained.

Serbia, she underlined, will continue to implement the White Book proposals at a faster pace next year, stating that the goal is to go beyond the "magic figure" of 50% of the recommendations.

Brnabic explained that all the positive economic results in Serbia came from reforms that have been actively implemented since 2014, adding that this effect is a joint success of the government, members of the Foreign Investors Council and businessmen.

According to Brnabic, we certainly would not be able to identify in the right way and effectively enough all that needs to be done in order to have a better business environment, as well as to implement changes in the way that they give immediate results without this kind of dialogue with the business sector, the members of the Council.

The Prime Minister noted that Serbia is the world leader in attracting foreign direct investment for the second time in three years, as reported by the Financial Times.

According to Brnabic, Serbia had €2.6 billion of foreign direct investment in 2017, last year €3.5 billion, and in the first eight months of this year our country recorded a 35% better result than in the same period last year.

Brnabic emphasised that our economic growth will be as the government projected - 3.5%, despite the fact that the first and second quarters had slightly lower economic growth, while in the third quarter the growth was 4.7%.

All of these results, she underlined, also have an impact on the fall in unemployment, with Serbia currently having a never lower unemployment rate of 10.3%, which by all current indicators will be single-digit in the third quarter of this year.