09.04.2021
Trade with Serbia fell by only 9% last year
Bulgaria has a new ambassador to Serbia - Petko Doynov. He has already presented his credentials to Serbian President Alexander Vucic, who emphasized Serbia's desire to develop relations with Bulgaria in a spirit of friendship and mutual understanding.
Serbia is not only a neighbor, but also an important partner of our country. It is located at the crossroads of two main pan-European transport corridors - № 7 and № 10, through which Bulgaria connects with the Old Continent. European transport corridor 10 (Salzburg-Ljubljana-Zagreb-Belgrade-Nis-Skopje-Thessaloniki) passes through Serbia and its diversions Budapest-Novi Sad-Belgrade and Nis-Sofia-Istanbul. Another important transport artery that crosses Corridor 10 in Belgrade is the Pan-European Transport Corridor 7 Rhine-Main-Danube.
Great importance is also attached to the construction of Corridor 11 (towards Montenegro). All this is a favorable factor for the development of international economic cooperation in the Balkans. European integration and the accession of our western neighbor to the EU is one of the main priorities of the Serbian government. In March 2012, Serbia received official candidate status, and in December 2015, the country was invited to enter into formal negotiations with the EU.
All this is a prerequisite for active bilateral cooperation. Currently, trade relations between Bulgaria and Serbia are regulated by the Stabilization and Association Agreement between the EU and the Republic of Serbia, signed in 2013.
The analysis shows that the export list of Bulgarian goods is dominated by raw materials, materials and goods with a low degree of processing. Leading places are occupied by petroleum oils and oils from bituminous minerals, electricity. In recent years, there has been an increase in the share of exports of products and products of the chemical, pharmaceutical and mechanical engineering industries. In imports, the leading positions are occupied mainly by raw materials, metals and petroleum products.
Since 2017, bilateral trade has crossed the 1 billion-euro mark and continues to grow. In 2019, trade reached 1.21 billion euros, but with a negative trade balance for Bulgaria. The pandemic 2020 brought very little change - goods were exchanged for 1.11 billion euros.
Regarding the participation in the privatization and the realized investments in Serbia, Bulgaria occupies leading positions in the number of its companies. There are more than fifty companies with Bulgarian or mixed capital and more than 20 representative offices. Some of the larger Bulgarian companies are represented on the Serbian market: Prista Oil, Rubella, My Gas, Office 1, Golden Rose, Technomarket, Intertrust Holding and others, noted by our Ministry of Economy.
Between 2006 and 2019, Serbian investments worth 241.3m euros entered Bulgaria. In the first nine months of last year, Serbian companies invested 14.1m euros in Bulgaria, but in 2020 a total of 72,039 Serbian businessmen traveled to Bulgaria for business purposes, which shows that there is interest in cooperation.
Tourism is among the most dynamically developing industries in bilateral trade and economic relations. More than 400,000 Serbs have visited Bulgaria as tourists in recent years - in both summer and winter resorts. In 2019, a total of 514,959 Bulgarians visited neighboring Serbia. In 2020, things are a little different - 125,758 guests from neighboring Serbia were here for a holiday and excursion.
The main infrastructure projects between Bulgaria and Serbia are the construction of Corridor 10, which is already ready on the Serbian side and we have to build our part between Kalotina and Sofia, and the construction of the gas interconnector.
The largest Serbian investment in Bulgaria is that of NIS Petrol EOOD, which is owned by Oil Industry Serbia (NIS), one of the largest oil companies in Southeast Europe, amounting to 75m euros. It includes 35 gas stations and a warehouse in the town of Kostinbrod.
Development opportunities
of the economic relations between Bulgaria and Serbia also exist in the cross-border cooperation and the formation of Bulgarian-Serbian business clusters in the border regions; participation of Bulgarian entrepreneurs in infrastructure projects on the territory of Serbia (Trace Group has such), financed by European funds; cooperation in the field of tourism by offering common tourism packages to third countries; joint activity to enter third markets. There are prospects for cooperation in the IT sector, where joint projects are possible in order to enter international markets with a common product and outsourcing projects.
