German Businessmen Want Structural Reforms in Serbia

Today, on the second day of his visit to Serbia, German Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel has met the Serbian Prime Minister, Aleksandar Vučić. The meeting at the Government of Serbia was also attended by Ronald Seeliger, CEO of Hemofarm and Chairman of the German-Serbian Business Association.

The goal of the session of the Serbian-German Business Council is the improvement of economic relations between two countries, and participants expressed their belief that structural reforms in Serbian would contribute to its development and arrival of new German investments.

’Serbia is the third most attractive country in the East and Central Europe for German investors, right after Poland and Estonia, which are members of the European Union. German companies are very satisfied with well-educated and motivated work force, but one of the biggest problems they face in Serbia is overly bureaucratic and inefficient public administration’, said Ronald Seeliger.

Eckhard Cordes, President of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations commended the Government of Serbia for the courage to take unpopular steps, namely to reduce the pensions and salaries in the public sector and emphasized that budget consolidation represented an important signal for investors and pointed out to the significance to apply the law, stating that enormous strength is needed to transfer the wishes of the government leadership to lower levels which should put them into practice.