Last year, Serbia and Croatia achieved a foreign trade exchange of 2.047 billion euros, which is an increase of 53 percent compared to 2021, i.e. by 710 million euros.
According to the data of the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, referred to by the weekly Hrvatska riječ from Subotica, last year Serbia exported goods and services to Croatia for 1.154 billion euros, which is about 70 percent more compared to the same period in 2021.
Imports to Serbia from Croatia increased in 2022 by 237 million euros, to 897.2 million euros, which is an increase of 35.9 percent compared to 2021.
Last year, Serbia mostly exported electricity, mineral fertilizer, sunflower oil, socks, petroleum oil, transport products, plastic goods packaging, rail vehicle parts, pasta, furniture, chocolate and cocoa products, nitrogen fertilizer, to Croatia. bread, pastries, cakes and biscuits.
In 2022, electricity was also the most imported from Croatia to Serbia, followed by soybeans, paper and cardboard, cement, glass containers for packaging goods, oil from petroleum and bitumen-ozone minerals, air pumps, compressors, meat products, cables and other electrical conductors.
“The data on the strong growth of the foreign trade exchange between Serbia and Croatia is almost surprising given the rather strained political relations. But one could say that in our region it is always like this: ordinary people and businessmen cooperate much better than politicians,” he said for Croatia economic journalist Mijat Lakićević.
He estimated that this great growth shows how weak this cooperation was before.
“This is evidenced by the fact that Serbia’s trade in goods with Bosnia and Herzegovina is 50 percent higher than with Croatia. Therefore, there is still a lot of room for cooperation between Serbia and Croatia to increase. And that cooperation would certainly be better if the relations between the political elites were better, that is, if political leaders would take a little more care of the interest of their nation, rather than their own,” said Lakićević.
