Business performance of the largest exporters in Serbia during the period 2008-2014

Abstract

A further shift of Serbian economy towards export-oriented economy is a solution which has no alternative. It requires a fundamental change of the current model of development and creation of export strategy which should be supported by adequate economic measures. The purpose of this paper is to identify successful and competitive export companies based on the analysis of business performance results in the period 2008-2014. Therefore, a database was created for the given period that comprises balance sheets of about 4,000 companies which were actively exporting over the observation period as well as export and import results and statistical data concerning their business operations. After analysing 100 largest exporters, the companies were classified based on their size, industry they operate in, degree of technological development, concentration, and export diversification. Based on the conducted analysis, it is established that Serbia has a small number of competitive net exporters, the export concentration being focused on a narrow segment of companies primarily owned by foreign legal entities. What these investing companies have found most appealing was mainly low-priced labour force and state incentives. Due to deep structural disruptions, Serbia is unable to reverse the course of negative trends unless it creates and implements a high-quality export strategy in parallel with fiscal consolidation and improvement of business environment, with direct and indirect export incentives in the current situation being highly necessary.