While exchanges of services continue to grow and have surpassed the two-billion-dollar mark, consolidating the U.S.’s position as the top export market for Serbian software developers, the trade in goods, which is worth almost half as much, has begun to stagnate, in anticipation of the U.S. Congress’s extension of the preferential import status of around 3,500 Serbian products. This is why American and Serbian companies, but also embassies and organizations, are continuing to lobby for the urgent renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, which expired back in 2020
In the meantime, American-South Korean consortium Hyundai Engineering, Hyundai ENG America and UGT Renewables has been selected by public tender as a strategic partner to install solar parks with a total capacity of 1 GW and a battery system for energy storage in Serbia by 2028, while American-Turkish consortium Bechtel-Enka is progressing seriously on the construction of the Moravian Corridor, Serbia’s first digital highway. Following the confirmed arrivals of biopharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Ginko Bioworks and Merck Sharp & Dohme at the future Bio4Campus, set to become the first biotech hub in Southeast Europe, the arrival of American manufacturer of innovative and precise medical devices, Medtronic, has also been confirmed through the signing of a memorandum.
Following the sale of popular drama Zlatni dečko [Golden Boy] to Amazon and the airing of the series Državni službenik [Civil Servant] on Disney Plus, as well as the broadcasting of three more shows on the HBO Max platform, Telekom Srbija – in a co-production with Amazon Prime Video and Radiotelevisión Española – has started filming for the series Scar, which is expected to hit TV screens by the end of this year. It includes the performances of Serbian actors and has also been partly shot in Serbia.
These are some of the events that have marked U.S.-Serbian economic cooperation over the past year, between two issues of CorD’s regular annual USA Business Partner publication.
Future economic ties between the two countries will depend on past and future investments in traditional production sectors, such as the food and tobacco, automotive, mechanical and electronics industries
With the continued operations of American investors that are already present in Serbia, as well as the arrival of American energy and biomedical companies, there is no doubt that exchanges in the service sector will continue to be one of the main pillars of economic relations between the two countries over the years ahead. The value of exchanged services has doubled over the last three years compared to the total achieved in 2020, when it surpassed the billion-dollar mark for the first time. It increased by almost 500 million dollars last year alone, up from 1.6 billion dollars in 2022, to a record-breaking 2.1 billion dollars. Serbia’s exporters of services are recording ever-better results on the U.S. market, having generated more than 1.6 billion dollars in revenue and a surplus of almost 1.4 billion dollars in 2023. Serbia exports five times more services to the U.S. than it imports, and in 2023, like in the preceding year, the highest percentage of recorded services revenue (60%) was generated from sales of telecommunications and computer and information services, as much as 58 percent of which came from the export of computer services, i.e. programming services. In comparison, the goods trade between Serbia and the U.S. reached 1.14 billion dollars last year, recording a drop of approximately 10 percent compared to the previous year. This area of trade is burdened more by the distance between the markets and has been growing more slowly, though it is now fairly balanced, albeit with a deficit of around 30 million dollars on the Serbian side.
The list of the more than 600 companies with majority American capital that operate in Serbia is increasingly including American ICT companies and other high-tech companies and investors. After Microsoft, which has been present in Serbia for two decades and founded its development center in Belgrade back in 2005, representing the first such center in this region and the fourth worldwide, other major American and global players began arriving in Serbia’s ICT and international shared services sectors. The largest U.S. investment in this sector to date is the NCR technology campus, while the investment worthiness of the Serbian market has also been recognized by the likes of Florence Tech, HYCU, Telesign Mobile, Foundever, EBV Elektronik (now Avnet), Telesign, Groundlink, Nutanix etc. Other major American technology companies that have been present in Serbia and the region for many years, through various forms of business, include Oracle, IBM, Cisco, Motorola, Dell, Honeywell, and now Paypal and the e-Bay platform. founded in December 2022, The Serbian R&D centers of IBM and Rivian were also established in December 2022 and began operating last year. Examples of mutual acquisitions in the IT sector have become increasingly common in previous years. The latest was announced in April this year, when U.S. software corporation Autodesk acquired Serbian-American startup Wonder Dynamics, which was founded by Serbian VFX expert Nikola Todorović and American actor Tye Sheridan, and which is behind the Wonder Studio – solutions for 3D animation and visual effects.
Despite the attention of new American investors being increasingly directed towards high tech areas (ICT, clean technologies in the energy sector and environmental protection, biotech and biomedicine), as announced during the Trade Mission of the U.S. Government in late 2022, future economic ties between the two countries will depend on past and future investments in traditional production sectors, such as the food and tobacco, automotive, mechanical and electronics industries. According to American sources, investments of U.S. companies – including investments from their European subsidiaries and investments made after establishing operations in Serbia – are estimated to total almost five billion dollars.
Serbia’s exporters of services are recording ever-better results on the U.S. market, having generated more than 1.6 billion dollars in revenue and a surplus of almost 1.4 billion dollars in 2023
The American companies that have invested here and are expanding their business operations, and that collectively employ more than 30,000 people in the country and contribute significantly to technology transfers and Serbia’s international export performance, include Philip Morris, Molson Coors, PepsiCo, Coca Cola Hellenic, Ball Packaging, Cooper Tires (now Goodyear) and Cooper Standard Automotive, Van Drunen Farms, Johnsons Controls, West Pharmaceutical Services, Lear Corporation, Ametek, Adient, Aptiv etc.
Serbia has also been recognized as a prospective tourist destination by global hotel brands Hilton, Marriott and Radisson. Our country is also increasingly on the radar of tourists from America, with 26 percent more of them visiting last year than the year before, with a major contribution to that figure coming thanks to Air Serbia’s establishing of direct flights to Chicago.
The intergovernmental investment promotion agreement, signed in January 2021, provides an additional tailwind for new investors and boosts security for existing ones. According to Serbian and American companies that have invested in Serbia and produce and export from the country, in addition to the renewal of the GSP program, the signing of a bilateral agreement on the avoidance of double taxation, as well as the announced agreement on strategic cooperation in the energy sector, would also contribute significantly to the better exploiting of the potential to strengthen economic cooperation between our two countries, while it would also motivate American investors to opt for Serbia and thereby increase mutual trade, given the great interest among American companies when it comes to investing in new, modern energy capacities in Serbia, primarily in the field of renewables.