Ever greater interest of german companies in Serbia as a business destination

In spite of the difficult economic environment the companies founded by German legal persons face in our country, they send positive signals of Serbia as the investment location in 2013. The majority of mentioned companies estimate their business position in Serbia as good or satisfactory.

A total of 37% of companies that participated in the poll plan to increase their investments, while 39% of them have increase of headcount as one of the most important targets. As many as 88% of them would again make investments in Serbia.

At the same time they criticized certain business conditions in Serbia which should be the priority of the Government of Serbia such as: inefficiency of the public administration, complicated bureaucracy, insufficient fight against corruption and crime, as well as establishment of full legal security.

A total of 39% of poll participants evaluate current status of their companies as good, 55% as average and only 6% claim that their company is in a difficult economic situation. As far as this year’s positive expectations for companies in relation to the previous year are concerned, 53% of poll participants expect operations of their companies to improve, while 39% of poll participants expect a stable and unchanged position of their companies. The remaining 8% expect a more difficult economic situation in 2013 as compared to the previous year.

The assessment of general economic situation in Serbia is far more negative: 79% of survey participants assess it as bad and only 21% have positive expectations that the current business year of 2013 will record improvement.

In relation to the topic of considering new investments and additional employment, this year’s poll results were very positive. Namely, the results clearly indicate that the labour market here and investment activities of German companies in Serbia are increasingly interesting: 37% of companies plan to increase their investments in 2013, while 39% will employ new workers.

When the companies participating in the survey assessed the business conditions, they pointed out that shortages of public administration efficacy, fight against corruption and organized crime, general payment discipline in the economy and legal security are particularly visible, which is the same as it was in the previous years. According to the results, current economic policy is also completely predictable.

Personnel and labour market are positively evaluated: qualification and motivation of employees, their total academic education, productivity and availability of qualified workers, as well as labour costs are evaluated as good.