Last year, almost a third of companies in Serbia or 31,465 in total did not have any employees, reports Biznis.rs, referring to the data collated by the regional credit rating company CompanyWall.
Most of these companies are in wholesale and retail (9,578), manufacturing (4,820), professional, scientific, innovative and technical activities (3,892) and construction (3,234).
While, compared to 2019, the number of companies without a single employee in the wholesale, retail and processing sector has been decreasing, it is significantly growing in construction, where there are 50 more of them compared to the year before. Similar growth is noticed in agriculture and real estate.
More than 99 percent of companies without workers are micro-companies (31,188 of them). Their business income is up to 700,000 euro, and the value of business assets is up to 350,000 euro.
Professor at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, Dr Milojko Arsić, says that a portion of the companies that officially have no employees operate in the shadow economy. “I am sure there are such companies among these 31,000. But, it is difficult to estimate their approximate number,” said Dr Arsić.
He presumes that if a company declares it has no employees, it probably wants to reduce its payroll tax or avoid paying it altogether.
(Danas, 21.07.2021)
https://www.danas.rs/ekonomija/skoro-trecina-firmi-u-srbiji-bez-zaposlenih-u-prosloj-godini/
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