The sales agreement formalising the sale of PKB (Belgrade Agricultural Combination) to the Emirati company Al Dahra was signed on 4 October 2018. The price for the primary assets was around €105 million, with a further €17 million for livestock.
Although PKB’s book value was twice as high, the state sold 16,785 hectares of the most fertile land at an average price of €4,700 per hectare. Along with the land, it sold roughly 17,000 head of livestock, machinery, and spare parts inventory.
With that transaction, Serbia did not just lose 17,000 cows and as many thousands of hectares, but also more than 1,700 employees, 50 of whom worked at PKB Agroekonomik. Almost all staff at that research and development centre were engineers, master’s degree holders, and PhDs engaged in scientific research, including adapting agriculture to the stressful conditions brought on by the climate crisis.
President Aleksandar Vučić celebrated the sale of PKB in his characteristic style as a massive success of his rule: “I think this is about us wanting to have companies that will bring profit to this country, pay taxes, rather than the state giving its money to cover losses.”
For two consecutive years, in 2023 and 2024, Al Dahra Serbia reported record losses exceeding €18 million, whereas prior to its sale, PKB incurred losses of between €10 and €12 million – with the difference that Serbia has since been importing record amounts of milk and dairy products.
Even in 2025, Al Dahra failed to pay a single dinar in profit tax into the state budget, as it remains loss-making. Last year, its net profit stood at around €4.5 million, despite having laid off more than 1,000 workers since 2018, slaughtered at least 6,000 dairy cows (down from around 9,000 to approximately 3,000 today), and shut down entire farms. Alongside dairy farms in Glogonjski Rit, Padinska Skela, and Dunavac, pig and beef fattening farms in Besni Fok and a sheep farm in Surčin were closed.
The government lacked €100m for PKB, yet spends €250m importing pork
However, in its transactions with the state – for which President Vučić is most responsible – Al Dahra records extraordinary profits. As many as 26 plots, which the authorities sold in 2018 for 55 dinars per square metre, were bought back from the Emiratis a few years later for the needs of Expo at 13 times the price – 720 dinars per square metre. Thus, for each of the 11 hectares it sold back to Serbia, Al Dahra profited by more than €55,000. The President’s goal was achieved.
Let us look at the other side of the coin to try to understand why Serbia had to sell PKB at all costs. When officials cite reasons, they always mention PKB’s “huge” losses, coupled with “megalomaniacal” investment requirements, which made it a “bottomless pit”. Serbia, therefore, ought to have celebrated when it “fobbed off” that pit onto an Emirati corporation, which presumably has money to burn. So, let us see how much investment was actually involved.
Immediately after signing the sales agreement, Al Dahra announced that over the following three years it would invest €30 million in upgrading operations, developing irrigation systems, and modernising milk production capacity. They planned a further €15 million to optimise PKB’s operations to achieve higher yields and improve milk quality. Recently, in a PR appearance, Al Dahra representatives stated that they have invested over €100 million in PKB so far and expect to reach profitability quickly. More precisely, had it not been for the COVID crisis and subsequent extreme droughts, they would have been in the black long ago, just as the President had predicted.
Now that we know the dimensions of this “bottomless pit”, let us put it into the context of certain state projects so we can understand the true scale of the problem. First, we will compare Al Dahra’s €100 million with the state’s investments in Expo, and let everyone judge for themselves whether it is more important for the country’s future to secure food production or to own exhibition space and sports stadiums.
Publicly available data shows that direct expenditure for Expo over the past two years has already exceeded €2 billion. In two years, therefore, 20 times more was invested than Al Dahra invested in PKB over eight years. Furthermore, the Fiscal Council estimates that total costs for Expo, including related projects, will exceed €3 billion, whilst government officials claim the cost will be 15 times greater than what was needed to recover PKB, as we now know.
Since this text has a limited character length, and examples of projects deemed more important than 16,785 hectares of the most fertile land are endless, one can conclude that the “economic tiger” did not lack the money to recover PKB. Rather, for those making the decisions, everything else was evidently more pressing than food. Eating bread and parizer sausage in front of the cameras, they messaged the public that citizens could eat anything, but could under no circumstances live in the shacks of Savamala. It was of essential importance to build Belgrade Waterfront with flats priced at €10,000 per square metre, and we could simply import meat and milk later.
Plant a mine wherever you find a good spot
And so it was. Looking at data from the Statistical Office, Serbia’s agricultural balance sheets can be divided into those before 2018 and those after the sale of PKB. Perhaps the loss of PKB and its vast resources was not the sole contributor to Serbia’s transformation from an exporter to an importer of agricultural produce, but it was certainly the model demonstrated by the state leadership in treating domestic agriculture.
Where agricultural land was attractive to foreign investors as a site for mines or other industrial projects, land was practically given away. Where agricultural production was – in the assessment of the President and his ministers – insufficiently efficient and not worth investing in to recover (for example, in villages), it was deemed better to mine lithium, copper, or gold, and leave the food supply to pragmatic importers.
Since 2018, domestic production has no longer managed to cover the needs of the home market on its own, which is why Serbia has largely transitioned from an exporter to an importer of almost all basic foodstuffs.
Pig farming has been hit hardest. According to the 1990 agricultural census, Serbia had 4.3 million pigs, compared to just 2.26 million in 2023. Domestic demand stands at around six million pigs per year. The remainder is made up for by massive imports of frozen meat. Between 2006 and 2012, imports rose from a mere €5 million to €41 million, reaching a record value of €256 million in 2024. Serbia now imports 60 times more pork than it exports.
Cattle numbers at a historic low, milk imports at a maximum
Cattle numbers have fallen by 18 per cent since 2018 and are now at an all-time low. Beef production has decreased drastically and barely covers basic domestic consumption, which is itself falling due to high retail prices. Domestic farms produce 1.4 billion litres of raw cow’s milk annually, but primary production is rapidly declining. Due to low purchase prices, rising feed costs, and poor breed composition, thousands of small producers have closed down their farms, and it is estimated that more than 600 villages no longer have a single cow. We are witnessing constant protests and the deliberate pouring away of milk across Serbia.
Milk and dairy imports simply exploded after 2020. Smaller domestic farms cannot compete with this tsunami of cheap imported milk. Processors find it more profitable to buy cheaper imported milk than to raise purchase prices for Serbian farmers. This situation practically pushes smaller farms out of business, as they cannot endure years of virtually unchanged, extremely low milk purchase prices while constantly facing rising costs for feed, fuel, machinery, electricity, and so on.
From 2018 to the present day, agricultural production has fallen sharply. Domestic output is shrinking by an average of 3 to 5 per cent annually depending on the sector, while consumption is sustained thanks to imports growing at much higher rates. At this pace, Serbian agriculture will hit the rock bottom that PKB was at in about 15 years, perhaps sooner. Due to inefficiency, piece by piece will be sold off to various Al Dahras and Rio Tintos; Serbia will import food and turn its fields into foreign colonies. One day, when climate-crisis-driven import prices skyrocket or imports become impossible, the citizens of Serbia will sit under that last remaining plum tree and, instead of bread and parizer, eat lithium from the Jadar Valley and gold from Majdanpek.
(Radar, 07.09.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/ekonomija/od-izvoznika-postala-uvoznik-hrane/