Economy
Main article: Economy of SerbiaSerbia has a transitional economy mostly dominated by services, manufacturing and agriculture. The economy is heavily reliant on exports and foreign investment. Since 2000, Serbia has attracted over $25 billion USD in foreign direct investment (FDI). Although average GDP growth over ten years has been 4.45% per year, Serbia suffers from a high unemployment rate (23.7% as of February 2012) and an unfavorable trade deficit.
Serbia is classed as an upper-middle income economy. GDP (PPP) for 2012 is estimated at $80.282 billion or $10,811 per capita (PPP). GDP per capita stood at 35% of the EU average in 2011.
Serbia has free-trade agreements with the EFTA and CEFTA, a preferential trade regime with the European Union, a Generalized System of Preferences with the United States, and individual free-trade agreements with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Turkey.
The major processed vegetable crops in Serbia are potatoes, tomatoes and pepper. Serbia grows about one-third of the world's raspberries and is a leading exporter of frozen fruit.
In July 2010, the credit rating agency Dun & Bradstreet rated Serbia's economy at DB4d, which remained the same since the last rating. There was expressed concern for the slower-than-expected recovery of the economy from the global financial crisis, along with the continuous high business risk due lowered credit capabilities, increasing company bankruptcy and generally poor economic prospects. The Agency also expressed concern for the high credit debt and large number of foreign banks in the financial sector, creating an increased risk of instability.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)