Analysis

Annual inflation in Serbia slows to 2.2 per cent, FDI increases

belgrade, serbia

Serbia’s annual consumer price inflation slowed to 2.2 per cent in May on a year-on-year basis, SEE News has reported.

According to data published by Serbia’s national statistics office, the country’s consumer price index (CPI) decreased by 0.3 per cent in May, after rising by 0.7 per cent in the previous month.

Consumer prices in restaurants and hotels were up by 0.8 per cent while month-on-month transport costs rose by 0.7 per cent. The price of food and non-alcoholic drinks dropped by 1.5 per cent in May.

Average annual consumer price inflation in Serbia slowed to two per cent last year compared to 2017, when it stood at three per cent.

Meantime, the country’s president Aleksander Vučić has said that foreign direct investment into the economy grew by 17 per cent between January and May.

“I have just received figures (…) indicating that FDI growth in the first five months of this year was as much as 17 per cent. That is 17 per cent more than in the same period of 2018, which was a record year,” the president said, referring to data from the National Bank of Serbia.

Mr Vučić noted that the country attracted 3.5 billion euros of foreign investment in 2018, more than all remaining states in the Western Balkans region combined.

Speaking at the opening of a car parts facility of German automotive company ZF in Pancevo, the president said that the plant would make Serbia “one of the countries in the region that will produce the ‘soul’ of electric cars, which are the future.”