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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Significant progress made in the registration of companies in Serbia

Belgrade/Istanbul, 8 October 2009

State Secretary of the Serbian Ministry of Finance Vuk Djokovic met in Istanbul with Vice President of the World Bank’s Department for Financial and Private Sector Penelope Brook and Vice President of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Department for Development of the Financial and Private Sector Janmitro Devan.

Vuk Djokovic

Author: politika.rs

The meeting focused on the results of this year’s report of the World Bank on the business climate, “Doing Business 2010”, in which Serbia went up from 90th place to 88th in the general ranking of the ease of doing business.

Djokovic said that such a ranking is an indicator of a better business climate in Serbia, but that results are still not satisfactory. He said that while the data for this global study were being collected (during the fall of 2008 and winter of 2009), Serbia made several legislative changes which will significantly improve Serbia’s position in reports to come.

The participants in the meeting agreed that Serbia has made significant progress in the registration of companies. The procedures have been largely simplified and that is why the procedure for obtaining a loan in Serbia takes a very high 4th place on the world ranking list.

However, Serbia is still very poorly ranked in the field of issuing building permits and licences, taking 174th place from 183 countries. That is why the new law will greatly simplify the necessary procedures.

There is also a very high heterogeneity among the units of local self-government, since some cities and municipalities issue permits very quickly, while in others the same procedure lasts a long time.

During the meeting it was agreed that the system of tax payments should be improved and modernised. Experience shows that there are countries which carried out reforms much more quickly than Serbia.

The greatest drawback is the number of payments of various taxes (66 payments per year in Serbia, while the average in the eastern European countries is 45 and in developed countries which are members of the OECD it is 12.8). That is why the reduction of that number is one of the priorities in the upcoming period, Djokovic explained.