Low birth rate, migrations to put Serbian economy at risk

BELGRADE - A decline in the number of babies and economic migrations will cause irreparable damage to the Serbian economy and society as a whole in less than 20 years, show analyses by the Business Support Network.

The network notes that, on average, 38,000 more people die than are born. The total number of citizens has decreased, despite the fact that in the 1990s nearly one million Serbs migrated to Serbia from the war-affected Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH).

At the same time, there are more and more pensioners in Serbia.

"The situation is particularly alarming in Serbia because there are currently only 991,000 people working in the economy, contributing to the budget and mandatory social insurance funds (the pension and disability insurance fund, healthcare fund and fund in case of unemployment), from which pensions for 1.75 million retirees are financed.

Moreover, the number of pensioners is continually growing, as those who started working in the 1970s and 1980s, when employment rates hit a record high, are now reaching the retirement age.

As soon as in 2020, pensioners will account for almost 34 percent of the total population, which means that if the economic growth continues to increase at the average rate seen in the period from 2003 to 2013, the ratio between workers in the economy and pensioners will be one to two.

The number of displaced Serbs who give up the Serbian citizenship on an annual level is an alarming loss for Serbia. In the last 10 years, around 150,000 young Serbs in Austria and Germany obtained the citizenship of these countries.

This is a major blow for the Serbian pension system, as in the future there will be less and less retirees receiving foreign...