In 2022, the sector with the highest number of companies registered in Serbia is Services with 125,511 companies followed by Wholesale Trade and Manufacturing with 28,699 and 21,865 companies respectively.
Agriculture ; Serbia was the 11th largest wine producer in Europe and 19th in the world in 2014. Serbia has very favourable natural conditions (land and climate) for varied agricultural production. It has 5,056,000 ha of agricultural land (0.7 ha per capita), out of which 3,294,000 ha is arable land (0.45 ha per capita). In 2024, Serbia exported agricultural and food products worth $5.3 billion. Agricultural exports constitute more than one-fifth of all Serbia's sales on the world market. Serbia is one of the largest provider of frozen fruit to the EU (largest to the French market, and second largest to the German market). Agricultural production is most prominent in
Vojvodina on the fertile Pannonian Plain. Other agricultural regions include
Mačva,
Pomoravlje,
Tamnava,
Rasina, and
Jablanica. In the structure of the agricultural production 70% is from the crop field production, and 30% is from the livestock production. It is also significant producer of maize (6.48 million tons, ranked 32nd in the world) and wheat (2.07 million tons, ranked 35th in the world). Other important agricultural products are:
sunflower,
sugar beet,
soybean, potato, apple, mutton, pork meat, beef,
poultry and dairy. There are 56,000 ha of
vineyards in Serbia, producing about 230 million litres of wine annually.
Energy The energy sector is one of the largest and most important sectors to the country's economy. Serbia is a net exporter of electricity and importer of key fuels (such as oil and gas). Serbia has an abundance of coal, and significant reserves of oil and gas. Serbia's proven reserves of 5.5 billion tons of
coal lignite are the 5th largest in the world (second in Europe, after Germany). Coal is found in two large deposits:
Kolubara (4 billion tons of reserves) and
Kostolac (1.5 billion tons). Almost 90% of the discovered oil and gas are to be found in
Banat and those oil and gas fields are by size among the largest in the Pannonian basin but are average on a European scale. The production of electricity in 2018 in Serbia was 38.3 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh), while the final electricity consumption amounted to 28.1 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh). Most of the electricity produced comes from thermal-power plants (71% of all electricity) and to a lesser degree from
hydroelectric-power plants (24%) and wind energy (3%). There are 6 lignite-operated
thermal-power plants with an installed power of 3,936 MW; largest of which are 1,502 MW-
Nikola Tesla 1 and 1,160 MW-
Nikola Tesla 2, both in Obrenovac. Total installed power of 9 hydroelectric-power plants is 2,831 MW, largest of which is
Đerdap 1 with capacity of 1,026 MW. In addition to this, there are mazute and gas-operated thermal-power plants with an installed power of 353 MW. The entire production of electricity is concentrated in
Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS), public electric-utility power company. The current oil production in Serbia amounts to over 1.1 million tons of oil equivalent and satisfies some 43% of country's needs while the rest is imported. National petrol company,
Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), was acquired in 2008 by
Gazprom Neft. The company's refinery in
Pančevo (capacity of 4.8 million tons) is one of the most modern oil-refineries in Europe; it also operates network of 334 filling stations in Serbia (74% of domestic market) and additional 36 stations in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 31 in
Bulgaria, and 28 in
Romania. There are 155 kilometers of crude oil pipelines connecting Pančevo and Novi Sad refineries as a part of trans-national
Adria oil pipeline. Serbia is heavily dependent on foreign sources of natural gas, with only 17% coming from domestic production (totalling 491 million cubic meters in 2012) and the rest is imported, mainly from Russia (via gas pipelines that run through Ukraine and Hungary).
Industry The industry is the economy sector that was the hardest hit by the
UN sanctions and trade embargo and
NATO bombing during the 1990s and transition to market economy during the 2000s. Main industrial sectors include: automotive, mining, non-ferrous metals, food-processing, electronics, pharmaceuticals, clothes. Serbia has 14 free economic zones as of September 2017, in which many foreign direct investments are realized. Automotive industry (with
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles as a forebearer) is dominated by cluster located in
Kragujevac and its vicinity, and contributes to export with about $2 billion. Country is a leading steel producer in the wider region of South Central Europe and had production of nearly 2 million tons of raw steel in 2018, coming entirely from
Smederevo steel mill, owned by the Chinese
Hesteel. Serbia notably manufactures
intel smartphones named Tesla smartphones. Food industry is well known both regionally and internationally and is one of the strong points of the economy. Some of the international brand-names established production in Serbia:
PepsiCo and
Nestlé in food-processing sector;
Coca-Cola (Belgrade),
Heineken (Novi Sad) and
Carlsberg (Bačka Palanka) in beverage industry; Nordzucker in sugar industry. The pharmaceutical industry in Serbia comprises a dozen manufacturers of generic drugs, of which
Hemofarm in Vršac and
Galenika in Belgrade, account for 80% of production volume. Domestic production meets over 60% of the local demand.
Mining Serbia's mining industry is comparatively strong: Serbia is the 18th largest producer of coal (7th in Europe) extracted from large deposits in
Kolubara and
Kostolac basins; it is also world's 23rd largest (3rd in Europe) producer of copper which is extracted by
Zijin Bor Copper, a large copper mining company, acquired by Chinese Zijin Mining in 2018; significant gold extraction is developed around
Majdanpek.
Telecommunications and IT industry Fixed telephone lines connect 89% of households in Serbia, and with about 8.82 million users the number of cellphones surpasses the total population of Serbia by 25%. The largest mobile operator is
Telekom Srbija with 4.06 million subscribers, followed by
Yettel Serbia with 2.73 million users and
A1 Srbija with about 2.03 million. Some 58% of households have fixed-line (non-mobile) broadband Internet connection while 67% are provided with
pay television services (i.e. 38% cable television, 17% IPTV, and 10% satellite).
Digital television transition has been completed in 2015 with
DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission. , 2010 The Serbian
IT industry is rapidly growing and changing pace. In 2018, IT services exports reached $1.3 billion. With 6,924 companies in the IT sector (), Belgrade is one of the
information technology centers in this part of Europe, with strong growth.
Microsoft Development Center located in Belgrade was at the time of its establishment fifth such center in the world. Many world IT companies choose Belgrade as regional or European center such as
Asus,
Intel,
Dell,
Huawei,
NCR,
Ubisoft, etc. These companies have taken advantage of Serbia's large pool of engineers and relatively low wages. Large investments by global tech companies, such as
Microsoft, typical of the 2000s, are being eclipsed by a growing number of domestic startups which obtain funding from domestic and international investors. What brought companies like Microsoft in the first place was a large pool of talented engineers and mathematicians. In just the first quarter of 2016, more than US$65 million has been raised by Serbian startups including $45 million for Seven Bridges (a
Bioinformatics firm) and $14 million for Vast (a
data analysis firm). One of the most successful startups have been
Nordeus, which was founded in
Belgrade in 2010, and is one of Europe's fastest-growing companies in the field of video games (the developer of
Top Eleven Football Manager; a game played by over 20 million people).
Tourism The touristic sector accounted for 1.4% of
GDP in 2017 and employs some 75,000 people, about 3% of the country's workforce. Foreign exchange earnings from tourism in 2018 were estimated at $1.5 billion. Serbia is not a mass-tourism destination but nevertheless has a diverse range of touristic products. In 2018, total of over 3.4 million tourists were recorded in accommodations, of which half were foreign. Tourism is mainly focused on the mountains and spas of the country, which are mostly visited by domestic tourists, as well as
Belgrade which is preferred choice of foreign tourists. The most famous mountain resorts are
Kopaonik,
Stara Planina, and
Zlatibor. There are also many
spas in Serbia, the biggest of which is
Vrnjačka Banja,
Soko Banja, and
Banja Koviljača. City-break and conference tourism is developed in Belgrade (which was visited by 938,448 foreign tourists in 2018, more than a half of all international visits to the country) and to a lesser degree
Novi Sad. Other touristic products that Serbia offer are natural wonders like
Đavolja varoš, Christian pilgrimage to the many
Orthodox monasteries across the country and the river cruising along the
Danube. There are several internationally popular music festivals held in Serbia, such as
EXIT (with 25–30,000 foreign visitors coming from 60 countries) and the
Guča trumpet festival.
Transport Serbia has a strategic transportation location since the country's backbone,
Morava Valley, represents by far the easiest route of land travel from continental Europe to
Asia Minor and the
Near East. Serbian road network carries the bulk of traffic in the country. Total length of roads is 45,419 km of which 915 km are "class-Ia state roads" (i.e.
motorways); 4,481 km are "class-Ib state roads" (national roads); 10,941 km are "class-II state roads" (regional roads) and 23,780 km are "municipal roads". The road network, except for the most of class-Ia roads, are of comparatively high quality to the Western European standards because of huge financial investments Serbias has been seeing in the last 10 years. Over 300 kilometers of new motorways has been constructed in the last decade and additional 142 kilometers are currently under construction:
A5 motorway (from north of
Kruševac to
Čačak) and 30 km-long segment of
A2 (between
Čačak and
Požega).
Coach transport is very extensive: almost every place in the country is connected by bus, from largest cities to the villages; in addition there are international routes (mainly to countries of Western Europe with small Serb diaspora). Routes, both domestic and international, are served by more than 100 bus companies, biggest of which are
Lasta and
Niš-Ekspres. , there were 1,959,584 registered passenger cars or 1 passenger car per 3.5 inhabitants. Serbia has 3,819 kilometers of rail tracks, of which 1,279 are electrified and 283 kilometers are double-track railroad. There are three airports with regular passenger traffic.
Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport served 5.6 million passengers in 2018 and is a hub of flagship carrier
Air Serbia which carried some 2.5 million passengers in 2018.
Niš Constantine the Great Airport is mainly catering
low-cost airlines.
Morava Airport is currently only served by Air Serbia. Serbia has a developed inland water transport since there are 1,716 kilometers of navigable inland waterways (1,043 km of navigable rivers and 673 km of navigable canals), which are almost all located in northern third of the country. ==Economic indicators==