BELGRADE – August 29, 2017 – Serbia is the world leader based on the number of new job openings per number of citizens in 2016, as it has been published today in the latest report of the “IBM Global Locations Trend 2017“.

Furthermore, based on the criteria of the number of newly created jobs compared to the number of projects initiated in 2016, Serbia is 5th among the European countries, ahead of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, France, Poland and 13th place among other countries of the world.

For several years, IBM Global Business Services has been analyzing the activities in the field of investments in Serbia, and this is the best result Serbia has achieved so far and presents the increase of almost 40 percent compared to 2015.

Rados Gazdic, Acting Director of the Development Agency of Serbia (RAS) stated that such a result was a consequence of many years of work, great efforts and sacrifices, but most importantly, synchronized efforts of all relevant institutions, starting from the Government of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Economy, RAS, local self-governments and possible investors.

“So far, we have often celebrated the results of our top athletes in different disciplines, but now, we are on the global top in the discipline of attraction of investments. Such a result certainly positions Serbia high on the map of investors and speaks a lot about dedication and commitment of the people who work on investment projects in the Government of the Republic of Serbia and RAS“, Gazdic stated.

In the last years, 22 investment agreements have been implemented through the projects administered by RAS, and in the upcoming period, it will bring approximately 240 million EUR of investments and open more than 17,000 jobs, which is the record in the last ten years.

During this year, RAS has implemented 16 agreements which will generate more than 154 million EUR of investments and enable opening of 7,000 new jobs. Currently, RAS works with 50 possible investors and their decision to invest in Serbia would mean implementation of investments in the value of approximately one billion EUR and 20,000 new jobs. The biggest number of projects is from the automotive industry, but there is a great interest also for electronic and machine industry, as well as for the textile industry and agriculture.

According to the data of the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), since 2007, Serbia has attracted the total of approximately 22 billion EUR of investments, and in the last year it has the inflow of approximately 2.1 billion EUR, and in the first six months of 2017, Serbia has had about one billion EUR of direct foreign investments. The greatest number of investments comes from the countries of the Western Europe, as well as from the Middle East, Far East, USA and Asia.