Serbian PDFs Available

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Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Spring 2024: Unleashing the Power of the Private Sector
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-11) World Bank
Economic activity in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region is expected to remain resilient but slow this year as a weaker global economy, slowdown in China, and lower commodity prices weigh on the region’s growth outlook. Regional growth is likely to drop to 2.8 percent in 2024, following substantial strengthening to 3.3 percent last year because of a shift from contraction to expansion in the Russian Federation and war-hit Ukraine, and a more robust recovery in Central Asia. Regional output growth is projected to moderate further to 2.6 percent in 2025. The outlook faces multiple headwinds. A slower-than-expected recovery in key trading partners, restrictive monetary policies, and exacerbation of geopolitical developments could further dampen growth across the region. Weak productivity growth in ECA in the recent decade has resulted in a sharp slowdown in income convergence with advanced economies. Fundamental drivers of productivity growth, including progress in advancing institutional and market reforms, technology adoption, and innovation, are key for enabling private sector–led growth. Boosting business dynamism in ECA will require addressing several challenges, including upgrading the competitive environment, reducing state involvement in the economy, dramatically boosting the quality of education, and strengthening the availability of finance. While meeting these challenges will look different across countries, addressing them is an essential condition to achieve stronger economic growth and overcome the middle-income trap.
Western Balkans Regular Economic Report No.24, Fall 2023: Toward Sustainable Growth
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-19) World Bank
In the context of weakening global demand, growth in the Western Balkans decelerated over the course of 2022 and into 2023. Against the background of the lasting effects of shocks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sticky inflation, and tighter financial conditions, global demand has been weakening, and this has a divergent impact across the Western Balkans (WB6). On the one hand, the slowdown in global demand contributed to weaker-than expected performance of industrial production in the whole European Union (EU) region and in the WB6. On the other hand, global demand has proved more resilient in services and, for travel, with twice as many people traveling globally during Q1 2023 as in the same period in 2022 (UNWTO). This has particularly benefited Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, where services exports have reached new record highs. In contrast, weakening global demand for goods has weighed on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), North Macedonia and Serbia. On the demand side, private consumption remained in general an important growth driver, despite rising price pressures. Reforms are needed to consolidate the recovery toward sustainable growth, while negotiations with the EU hold the potential to bolster prospects in the Western Balkans. As the WB6 agriculture sector is undergoing a major structural transformation, efforts to green agriculture are also important to ensure access to the EU market and for the competitiveness of agriculture, rural development, and food and nutrition security. Most WB6 countries have recently included agriculture greening in their development strategies. Historically, the environmental footprint of the WB6 agriculture sector has been relatively low. But this has been more an unintended outcome of still high rurality and low farming intensity rather than a result of public policy and expenditure choices. Agricultural public expenditures, while substantial in terms of amounts and adequate to influence agricultural production, have not yet prioritized financing of greening and climate-smart agriculture. It is important for the WB6 countries to accelerate greening of their agriculture by learning from the EU’s green transition and better utilization of the existing public funds available for agricultural development.
Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Fall 2023: Sluggish Growth, Rising Risks
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-05) Kasyanenko, Sergiy; Izvorski, Ivailo; Singer, Dorothe
Europe and Central Asia continues to be negatively impacted by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, tighter global financial conditions, persistent inflation, and global economic fragmentation. Economic growth in the region is projected to remain weak relative to the long-term trend, delaying the convergence of living standards to those of high-income countries. The impacts of climate change are becoming a serious constraint on growth, as extreme weather events are affecting the region with increased frequency and severity. Economic growth for the emerging market and developing economies of the Europe and Central Asia region has been revised up to 2.4 percent for 2023. The pickup in growth reflects improved forecasts for Ukraine, Central Asia, Türkiye and Russia. Downside risks cloud the outlook. High inflation may persist amid heightened volatility in global commodity markets and a surge in energy prices. Global financial conditions may tighten further. And global growth, already the weakest on record for any five-year period since 1990, may slow further.
Western Balkans Regular Economic Report, No.22, Fall 2022: Beyond the Crises
(Washington, DC, 2022-10) World Bank
The economies of the Western Balkans continue to face a turbulent external environment, placing households, firms, and governments under acute stress. Just as the post-COVID recovery of 2021 began to fade and the region returned to a normalized rate of economic growth, the Western Balkan region now faces a new combination of challenges. The war in Ukraine, and the resultant sharp increase and energy prices and slowdown in global growth, is weighing on economic performance in all six economies. Higher energy and food prices have pushed inflation to levels unseen for many years, eroding purchasing power and business confidence. Monetary tightening in advanced economies is pushing up financing costs and weakening external demand. Following a strong rebound in 2021, growth, although still robust, was on a decelerating path in the first half of 2022. In Q1 of 2022, the Western Balkan economies remained resilient overall, supported by sizable policy actions at the EU, euro area, and national levels. First-quarter growth was particularly strong in tourism-based economies and in Serbia. However, growth decelerated in Q2, as countries had to deal with the direct consequences of the war and is projected to continue decelerating in the second half of the year reflecting higher base levels of growth in Q3 and Q4 2021 and the stronger global headwinds.
Supporting Serbia’s Transition to Greener and More Resilient Growth: Policy and Institutional Reforms
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-09-30) World Bank
Serbia needs to transition to a greener growth model for internal and external reasons. Internally, Serbia’s economy is still characterized by low energy and resource productivity, with significant impacts on health and the environment. As a candidate country for EU membership, Serbia also needs to react to external influences by aligning domestic policies with the EU’s energy, environment, and climate legislation, while avoiding negative impacts of the EU’s planned Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). This report draws from a rich analysis to provide recommendations on how the transition to greener and more resilient growth in Serbia can begin. First, environmental fiscal reforms are needed to incentivize the adoption of more environmentally friendly technologies. The implementation of carbon pricing will also enable Serbia to proactively prepare for the upcoming EU CBAM. The proceeds of carbon pricing should be reinvested in innovation and education to further accelerate the green transition. Second, institutional frameworks need to be strengthened to support the government in delivering on reforms. Third, sector-specific reforms will need to address important challenges like energy efficiency, air pollution, waste management, water, and wastewater. Importantly, the transition needs to be based on a coherent and adaptive roadmap, which mitigates the risks of 'brown' growth, protects those adversely impacted, and ensures an equitable distribution of the benefits of increased growth.
Social Protection Situational Analysis : Serbia
(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank
The objective of this situational analysis is to provide a brief assessment of Serbia’s social protection system. The situational analysis identifies how Serbia’s social protection system performs and outlines areas for reform. In this note, social protection refers to: (i) social assistance, (ii) social services, (iii) social insurance (pensions), and (iv) employment and labor market programs. The analysis is based on existing evidence and identifies knowledge gaps to be covered in further analysis. The analysis shows that Serbia operates a comprehensive social protection system; however, policy priorities and inefficiencies in program execution reduce efficiency and effectiveness. Section one gives introduction. The second section provides an overview of poverty and labor market outcomes in Serbia. The third section provides an overview of the social protection system in aggregate, followed by more detailed analysis of social assistance, social services, pensions, and employment programs. A specific section is dedicated to reviewing the social protection system’s response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The final section provides an overview of reform priorities and knowledge gaps.
Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Fall 2021: Competition and Firm Recovery Post-COVID-19
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-10-05) World Bank
Although global economic activity is recovering and output in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) is expected to grow in 2021, containing COVID-19 remains a challenge in the region. Enterprise survey data for the emerging and developing countries in the region show that COVID-19 had a profound and heterogeneous impact on firms. Smaller, younger, and female-run businesses were hit harder and had greater difficulty recovering. But the crisis also played a cleansing role and economic activity in ECA appears to have been reallocated toward more productive firms during the crisis, particularly in countries with more competitive markets. Firms with high pre-crisis labor productivity experienced significantly smaller drops in sales and employment than firms with low pre-crisis labor productivity and were also more likely to adapt to the crisis by increasing online activity and remote work. Many governments in ECA implemented broad policy support schemes to address the initial economic fallout from the crisis. Overall, this government support was more likely to go to less productive and larger firms, regardless of the level of their pre-crisis innovation. As economies enter the economic recovery phase, it will be important for policy makers in all countries to phase out broad policy support measures as soon as appropriate and focus on fostering a competitive business environment, which is key to a strong recovery, resilience to future crises, and sustainable, long-term economic growth.
Building Effective, Accountable, and Inclusive Institutions in Europe and Central Asia: Lessons from the Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06) Boyce, Daniel J.; Arizti, Pedro; Manuilova, Natalia; Sabatino, Carlos; Senderowitsch, Roby; Vila, Ermal
Countries around the world are facing the need to build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions. There has never been a more important moment to tackle this agenda, as countries grapple with increasing fragility and migration flows, more complex service delivery requirements, and greater demands for transparency and inclusion, all in a more resource-constrained environment. Moreover, the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic crisis has provided new evidence of the need for effective, accountable, and inclusive government responses. Governments’ capacity to respond to these complex challenges is understandably stretched, but this has not limited the rise of citizens’ expectations. Instead, it has often increased tensions and, in some cases, has affected the trust between governments and their citizens. This publication builds on the World Bank’s vast engagement across ECA and on the 2019 regional governance conference. It consists of six chapters, each corresponding to one of the governance areas around which governments across the world organize their institutional functions. Each chapter contains background and analysis by World Bank specialists, complemented by country case studies authored by regional experts and policymakers.
World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019) World Bank
Work is constantly reshaped by technological progress. New ways of production are adopted, markets expand, and societies evolve. But some changes provoke more attention than others, in part due to the vast uncertainty involved in making predictions about the future. The 2019 World Development Report will study how the nature of work is changing as a result of advances in technology today. Technological progress disrupts existing systems. A new social contract is needed to smooth the transition and guard against rising inequality. Significant investments in human capital throughout a person’s lifecycle are vital to this effort. If workers are to stay competitive against machines they need to train or retool existing skills. A social protection system that includes a minimum basic level of protection for workers and citizens can complement new forms of employment. Improved private sector policies to encourage startup activity and competition can help countries compete in the digital age. Governments also need to ensure that firms pay their fair share of taxes, in part to fund this new social contract. The 2019 World Development Report presents an analysis of these issues based upon the available evidence.
The City of Pancevo’s Citizen Service Center, Serbia: Streamlining Service Delivery and Fostering Inclusion at the Municipal Level
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06) Pfeil, Helene; Agarwal, Sanjay; Schott, Berenike Laura; Johns, Kimberly D.
This case study provides an overview of the Pan evo Citizen Service Center (CSC), which, since its establishment in 2009, has delivered a variety of municipal services to citizens under one roof. It examines the measures established by the municipal team to guarantee equal access to services for all segments of the population and to improve the quality of service delivery, notably by migrating certain procedures online and providing citizens with rapid feedback mechanisms. While institutional coordination, funding, staff motivation, and capacity to meet demand remain challenges, the CSC has become a key focal point for the municipality, with the number of citizens visiting the center each year almost equaling the city’s inhabitants. Successes achieved through this local-level, one-stop-shop model include easier access, greater efficiency, faster delivery, improved communication, and better quality of information for citizens.