Some 360 Greek and Serbian business owners participated in a Serbian-Greek business forum held on the sidelines of the Greek prime minister’s visit to Serbia on Monday.
Serbia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that the total included 76 Greek business owners who were active in the sectors of energy, construction, manufacturing, real estate, and banking. The business forum concluded with B2B meetings.
Also attending the forum were Greek Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Kostas Fragogiannis, and the Ministers of Infrastructure and Transport Christos Staikouras, Development Kostas Skrekas, and Environment and Energy Thodoros Skylakakis. On the Serbian government’s side, attending were Finance Minister Sinisa Mali and Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Goran Vesic. Serbian Republic President Aleksandar Vucic and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also addressed the meeting.
In his speech, President Vucic said he asked Mitsotakis to encourage Greek banks to renew their interest in the Serbian market, although this is an issue of the market’s operation because Serbia has changed.
Deputy FM Fragogiannis said the strengthening of Greek-Serbian economic relations was proven by the numbers. “In 2022, the volume of bilateral trade rose to the historically high level of 750 million euros, imports from Serbia rose by 17.5%, while exports to Serbia presented a significant rise of 26.3%. The sectors with the highest exportable dynamic are minerals, metals and their derivatives, chemical products, wood, paper, rubber, plastics, processed foods and animal feed, machinery and electronic equipment,” he noted.
A total of 254 Greek-owned businesses are active in Serbia, maintaining a stock of Foreign Direct Investment of 634 million euros, he added.
Infrastructure Minister Vesic informed business participants of the conversations he had with his Greek counterpart Staikouras, and underlined the importance of constructing an updated railroad network from Thessaloniki to Belgrade, as well as coordinating the electronic toll-collection system.
