Current business environment progress in Serbia

24 / 10 / 2024

Serbia has made good progress in expanding its digital services and infrastructure, but
there are areas for further improvement, according to the fourth Semi-annual report on the
business environment (ВЕ) in Serbia ргерагеа by the ‘ЕО for Better Business Environment’
(EU4BE) project, supported by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the World Bank
(WB).
The report analyses progress in BE in Serbia against more than 20 international benchmarks
and identifies reform priorities and gaps in the regulatory framework for businesses. It also
provides a basis for prioritization and coordination of business enabling reforms among the
stakeholders.
Check the report for findings, among them:

DIGITAL SERVICES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
“Advancement п e-Government includes enabling electronic registration of businesses апа
e-Payment for a portion of services, a range of electronic services for taxpayers, etc.
Challenges remain in areas such as data exchange and service interoperability, highlighting
the need for continued investment and policy refinement to achieve further digital
transformation.”

REGULATORY & ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS
“Despite recent efforts to reduce regulatory and administrative burdens, challenges
remain, particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These challenges include
high parafiscal charges, cumbersome tax procedures, and low utilization of electronic
services.

E-COMMERCE
“The conditions for doing e-commerce in Serbia are satisfactory. Estimated retail
e-commerce in Serbia exceeds one billion dollars in 2022, with significant growth of
e-traffic in the репоа 2020-2022, and the annual growth rate of e-retail ог 46.1% in 2022.
As of end 2023, 58 percent of companies are satisfied with e-commerce conditions,
with ап overall average satisfaction rating of 3.6 (оп а scale of 1to 5). Medium and large
enterprises are particularly satisfied with e-commerce conditions (83 percent), while
the satisfaction level is lower among micro апа small companies (approximately 50 percent
of them).