Serbia achieves the largest trade surplus with Montenegro: Exports electricity and medicines, imports electricity and dried meat

Serbia's trade with the countries of the European Union (EU) in the first nine months of this year, according to the data of the Republic Institute of Statistics (RZS), amounted to 59,5 percent, Demostat reported today.

As of October, the Serbian economy, despite the complex circumstances, managed to increase the export of goods by 7,2 percent, seen in dinars, but this is still less than inflation in Serbia. At the same time, imports decreased by 4,3 percent.

The largest export market for goods from Serbia is Germany, to which goods worth 3,6 billion euros were shipped in the first ten months, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina with 1,67 billion, Italy with 1,5 billion, Hungary with 1,4 and Romania with 1,27 billion euros.

On the other hand, imports are dominated by Germany, which sold goods worth four billion euros in Serbia, China 3,7 billion, Italy 2,2, Turkey 1,4 and Russia 1,39 billion euros.

Serbia achieves the largest surplus in mutual trade with Montenegro, to which it mainly exports electricity and medicines, and from which it also imports electricity and dried meat.

Serbia also has a surplus with some of the EU countries, which means that it exports more to them than it exports from them, so a "plus" in trade was recorded with Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Hungary, but also with countries such as Great Britain, Moldova and North Macedonia.

The deficit in trade is primarily present in the exchange with China, mostly due to the import of phones and laptops, but also with Turkey, Italy, Iraq, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Austria, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Greece.

RZS data for the first nine months of this year show that the top 20 largest foreign trade partners account for as much as 79,4 percent of Serbia's total foreign exchange. Of that, Serbia exported more to nine European countries than it imported from them, and the total surplus was 2,8 billion euros, and with Montenegro alone, the "plus" was 825,2 million euros.

Serbia had a deficit of a total of 5,8 billion euros with 11 countries, of which only China accounts for almost half of the total deficit - 2,5 billion euros, and Turkey, which mainly imports metals and electrical equipment, another 866 million euros.

Changes in the ratio of exports and imports this year were largely influenced by the recovery of the Electric Power Company of Serbia (EP) from the disaster in 2021, as well as the normalization of electricity prices on world markets, which is why the export of electricity in the first nine months of this year increased by 89,3, 51 percent, while imports fell by XNUMX percent.

Agriculture acted in the other direction, since a decrease in the export of agricultural products was recorded by 33,1 percent, and an increase in imports by 12,9 percent.