Jorgovanka Tabakovic: Overview of recent monetary and macroeconomic trends in Serbia

Speech by Dr Jorgovanka Tabaković, Governor of the National Bank of Serbia, at the presentation of the Inflation Report, Belgrade, 19 May 2021.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed members of the press, dear colleagues,

Allow me to bid you welcome to the presentation of the May Inflation Report after more than a year,with a sincere wish that as of August we return to our usual way of holding press conferences andanswering all your questions live. This time again, we shall present to you the latest macroeconomicdevelopments, our new macroeconomic projections, as well as monetary policy decisions in theperiod since the previous Report.

As you all know, behind us is the period during which we faced unprecedented health and economicchallenges. In 2020 most advanced economies experienced economic downturns multiple timesmore severe than in the last global economic crisis, which negatively affected the labour market andother economic indicators in many countries.

Although today much more integrated in global production and trade chains, Serbia – owing to theresponsible conduct of economic policy in the past period and coordinated and timely measures ofthe NBS and the Government – managed to minimise the economic fallout from the pandemic. Notonly have we preserved the existing production capacities, but we also built the new ones, and wecontinued with our investment cycle, launched in 2015. We thus reduced the fall in GDP to only 1%in 2020, and we managed to reach its pre-crisis level already in Q1 this year – a quarter earlier than we expected.