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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Exports to be stimulated through more favourable loans

Belgrade, 8 April 2008

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic announced today at the presentation of the draft national strategy for increasing Serbian exports from 2008 to 2011 that the state will try to stimulate exports through certain measures, and primarily through more favourable loans.

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management Slobodan Milosavljevic, Bozidar Djelic, PKS President Milos Bugarin and Minister of Trade and Services Predrag Bubalo

Author: Fonet

Djelic stressed that the plan is to increase exports by 25% in the next several years and that the participation of final products should increase from 43% to 65%. The number of companies whose annual exports exceed €10 million should go up from 66 to 120 companies, he added.

The Deputy Prime Minister also announced that in the next three years, 25 commercial advisors would be appointed in key regions, based on a survey of businessmen, and added that the countries in question are EU countries, Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East and North Africa.

He also said that Serbia has been in an unfavourable export situation in the past several years because despite a certain improvement, only two companies have achieved exports of more than €100 million.

Djelic specified that exports exceeding €50 million were recorded by only six companies, whereas the last company on the list of the 300 largest exporters achieved exports of barely €2 million. He noted that Serbia’s exports stand at €870 per capita, which is 11 times less than the Slovenian figure and two or three times less than in Croatia.

According to him, the foreign trade deficit is stable and stands at 28% of GDP, however the deficit of the balance of payments, which amounts to 17.6% of GDP, is a cause for concern.

Djelic also invited exporters from all sectors in the country to join together in order to improve Serbia’s foreign trade deficit, which is the worst in Europe.

Addressing the press in the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, he said that the Serbian government’s Committee for Economy and Finance, chaired by himself, will discuss today the privatisation of the mining and metallurgical complex RTB Bor.

The Committee will make no decisions because a session of the Committee for Auditing and Implementation of the Action plan for restructuring and privatisation of RTB Bor is scheduled for tomorrow, which will propose to the government the best solution for this complex, Djelic explained.

According to him, the most important thing is to establish a social dialogue on the future of RTB Bor and to make a decision together with the management and the employees whether it is better to grant A-Tec an extension to deadline for payment of the purchase price, or to enter negotiations with the second-ranked bidder, Russian company Strikeforce Mining and Resources Ltd (SMR).

He said that it is very important to put politics aside in the case of RTB Bor and that the government is obliged to act in the interest of the citizens of Serbia, that is, those who work in RTB Bor and live in Bor and Majdanpek.

Asked to comment on the decision of Deutsche Bank to quit financing all major projects in Serbia, Djelic said that this confirms the risk in holding up Serbia’s progress towards the EU, resulting in the leading financial institutions to suspend funding to our country.

The Serbian Deputy Prime Minister said that every day in the last few weeks he has been receiving the presidents of foreign banks and companies that do business in Serbia and added that all of them express concern about the political situation in the country.