Bern: Ambassador Bradić attends the Business Diaspora Summit in Zurich

Ambassador Bradić emphasised that Serbia had, in spite of the difficulties caused by the pandemic and geopolitical challenges, preserved its economic, political, financial and energy stability in the previous period, and achieved enviable results, illustrating it with data on the growth of the trade in goods and services with Switzerland during the first three quarters of this year, as well as the previous two years.

He highlighted the constant growth of Serbia's GDP, the fact that the public debt (53.7% of GDP) and the budget deficit (38% of GDP) in the country were under control, while the unemployment rate was low (9.8%) and the country had achieved excellent results in attracting foreign direct investment in the amount of 3 billion EUR during the first nine months. He also stated the fact that the export of services in the ICT sector had become the most valuable export branch, with a record income of 2.7 billion EUR expected this year, which would almost double the 2020 result (1.44 billion EUR).

Ambassador Bradić also presented data from the economic barometer, which had been presented in Switzerland this month and indicated a growing importance of the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe in nearshoring and outsourcing, i.e., moving locations for production or provision of services to be nearby or transferring them to other regions. This is something that Serbia has considerable capacities for, which could be also used by businesspeople from the diaspora. In this context, he also highlighted several positive examples of investments by Serbian and Swiss businesspeople during the preceding three quarters.

President of the Swiss Chamber of Commerce Central Eastern Europe Oliver Bertschinger stressed the growing importance of Serbia for Swiss companies, and illustrated it by the fact that Serbia had imported various machines from Switzerland in the value of 224 million CHF during the first three quarters of 2022, which was 80% more than in the same period of 2021,  a record growth compared to all the Swiss export economic branches, as well as a growth indicator of Serbian production.

Speakers at this second Business Diaspora Summit also included Advisor to the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia Miroslav Lutovac, Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia Ninoslav Erić, and Uroš Živković from the project team of the “Tačka povratka” project, established by the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia.