Economy

Imports
$38.9 billion (2023). Crude Petroleum ($1.89B), Petroleum Gas ($1.39B), Packaged Medicaments ($1.29B), Cars ($1.17B), and Electricity ($1.04B), importing mostly from Germany ($4.6B), China ($3.96B), Italy ($2.64B), Turkey ($2.01B), and Hungary ($1.83B).

Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of  age)
• 89.4% have an account with a financial institution
• 16.2% have a credit card
• 9.5% make online purchases

Ease of doing business
It is very easy to conduct business (rated 75.7 out of 100) ranked 8th out of 24 European and central Asian countries, and ranked 44th out of 190 countries worldwide (2023, World Bank).

Exports
$32.6 billion (2023). Insulated Wire ($2.32B), Electricity ($1.88B), Copper Ore ($1.52B), Electric Motors ($990M), and Rubber Tires ($863M), exporting mostly to Germany ($4.76B), Hungary ($2.26B), Bosnia and Herzegovina ($1.77B), Italy ($1.72B), and Romania ($1.59B).

Main local online stores
Amazon, eBay and Alibaba

Economic freedom
‘Moderately free’ (rated 62.7 out of 100) ranked 31st out of 44 European countries, ranked 60th out of 184 countries worldwide (2024, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal).

Global Innovation Index
Ranked 32nd out of 39 European countries, and 53rdout of 132 worldwide.

The Global Innovation Index captures the innovation
ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.

Media

Media language:
Serbian, English

Information channels:
Television is, by far, the main source of news and information. The flagship public network, RTS1, is among a handful of outlets that dominate the market. There are more than 90 TV channels and the average viewer spends more than five hours a day watching television, the highest figure in Europe. Six TV stations are licensed to broadcast nationally; 30 have regional licenses. National TV broadcasters attract around 70 percent of the audience. RTS1 is the most popular channel in Serbia, attracting up to a quarter of the audience and providing strong competition for commercial stations, including leading commercial network TV Pink. Media freedom issues mainly relate to the judiciary, often seen as incompetent, corrupt, and unable to protect journalists. In 2014, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Serbia 54^th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index, ahead of most countries in the region. Some cases of journalists being threatened and intimidated have been recorded.

The press

Politika – private daily
Blic – popular private daily, English-language pages
Danas – private daily
Glas javnosti – private daily
NIN – private weekly
Vreme – private weekly
Vecernje Novosti – daily

Television

Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) – government-funded
B92 TV – private, English-language web pages
TV Pink – private
Prva Srpska TV – private, formerly Fox TV
Happy TV – private
Studio B TV – run by Belgrade city 

Radio

Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) – government-funded
B92 – private, English-language web pages
Association of Independent Electronic Media – representing private local radio and TV stations

News agency

Tanjug – state-run, English-language pages
Beta – private
FoNet – private

Internet Data

Internet users
90% penetration, 6.40 million

Share of web traffic by device
55.20% mobile phones, 43.65% computers (laptops and desktops), 1.13% tablet devices, others 0.03%

Median speed of mobile Internet connection
50.43 Mbps

Median speed of fixed Internet connection
71.72 Mbps

Mobile connection as a percentage of total population: 124.9%

Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G): 96.1%

Most popular web search engines
Google (97.28%), Bing (1.85%), Yahoo! (0.41%), Yandex (0.31%), DuckDuckGo (0.09%), other (0.06%)

Most used social media
Facebook (81.05%), Instagram (11.67%), Twitter (2.53%), Pinterest (2.15%), YouTube (1.17%), Reddit (0.74%), LinkedIn (0.51%), other (0.18%)

Social statistics

Life expectancy
75 years (2022)

CO2 emissions
6.71 metric tons per capita

Corruption perceptions Index
Serbia scored 36 out of 100, ranked 101 out of 180 countries worldwide.

Current health expenditure
10.01% of GDP (2021)

Current education expenditure
97.3% of total expenditure in public institutions

World Happiness Index
Serbia ranked 43 out of 146 countries, with a score of 6.178.