A department for foreign trade promotion of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, Advantage Austria Beograd said that, despite 40% of the surveyed companies that operate in Serbia have had their revenue reduced (during the pandemic), 30% planned to invest even more in the next 12 months.
“The great majority of companies have kept the same number of employees, and a third even plans to employ more people in 2021,” the press release says.
The survey of the advantages and disadvantages of doing business Serbia was carried out in late 2020 among the Austrian companies that employ close to 20,000 people in Serbia.
In the survey, the Austrian companies have expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of legal security and transparency, as well as the excessive bureaucracy.
More investments in infrastructure and qualified workforce are also high on the list of the wishes of Austrian investors.
The commercial counselor at the Embassy of Austria in Belgrade, Erika Teoman-Brenner, said that many critical points remained the same year after year, despite the overall improvement in the preceding years thanks to the reforms.
“We would like to see more concrete measures to address the well-known problems. We are confident that Serbia would remain an attractive location for Austrian companies in that case. The availability of qualified workers will contribute substantially to it,” Teoman-Brenner said.
She added that she was glad that Serbia had taken important steps toward the implementation of the dual education system and that Austria was its partner on this project.
(eKapija, 01.02.2021)
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