Over a one-year-period, the Serbian government allocated a total of 93 million EUR worth of employment incentives to investors with only 2.57 EUR million going to domestic investors and the rest to the foreign ones.
In one year since the new Investment Law came into force, a total of 28 investments were given employment incentives. Although, the new law was supposed to treat equally domestic and foreign investors, only three Serbian companies were actually granted incentives. Out of EUR 92.9 million of granted incentives, just EUR 2.57 million went to Serbian investors.
Metalac from Gornji Milanovac was one of those companies that were overlooked in regard to employment incentives. Metalac bought the bankrupt company Fabrika Automobilskih Delova (FAD), also from Gornji Milanovac, and hoped that the state would help in putting the factory on its feet.
“I am not happy at all with the way the state stimulates domestic investors. We are not treated equally compared to foreign investors. We bought FAD when the company was bankrupt and had no workers. For a whole year, we have been fighting to get some kind of incentives from the state. In the end, we were told we were not eligible for incentives because, in the meantime, we had hired a certain number of workers to work for us for a limited period of time. We had to hire these people while waiting for the state to make a decision. We did not get the employment incentives which are 4,000 EUR per new job” – says Dragoljub Vukadinovic, CEO of Metalac.
The Ministry of Economy says that, in an effort to additionally stimulate domestic investors, they have lowered their incentives criteria in terms of the minimum investment amount and the mandatory number of new employees.
(Vecernje Novosti, 16.11.2016)
