BELGRADE: Serbia’s trade deficit in 2015 amounted to 4.8 billion dollars (4.32 billion euro), a decrease by 16.1% as compared to a year earlier, revised data released by the country’s statistics bureau showed on Friday. Earlier data put the country’s 20015 trade deficit at 4.9 billion dollars, down by 15.8%.
Exports stood at 13.38 billion dollars, down by 9.9%, while imports amounted to 18.21 billion dollars, declining by 11.6%, data published on the statistics office website showed. Foreign trade turnover last year reached 31.589 billion dollars, which is a 10.9% decrease compared to 2014.
“The decline in imports and exports, as well as the decrease of the overall external trade turnover, expressed in dollars, resulted from the currency’s strengthening versus the dinar and the euro,” the statistics office said. The export – import ratio in 2015 equaled 73.5%, as compared to 72.1% a year earlier.
Serbia’s major export markets were Italy, absorbing 216.3 billion dollars in exports, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and the Russian Federation. The bulk of Serbia’s imports originated in Germany, followed by Italy, the Russian Federation, China and Hungary.