Couple of days ago, exactly on May 31st, the leading German business daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has published its own stock market survey where Serbian stock market index Belex 15 has been marked as a clear global leader in 2011, with more than double in increased value than the runner-up, Mongolian MSE Top 20.
Serbia on EU Fast Track with Mladic’s Arrest
German analysts concluded, and rightly so, that this sharp surge in index value is partly due to last weeks arrest of Bosnian army general Ratko Mladic in Serbia, who was escaping international justice for the last 16 years, believed to be supported by his wartime compatriots and family members in Serbia.
Now, what is the connection between alleged war criminal on the run and one’s country economy? Well, having Mladic behind bars was of huge importance to some European countries, especially Holland, and due to that reason Serbian accession to European Union membership was hampered and severely red taped at every step of the way.
Having being forced to work as triple as hard with little or no rewards throughout the accession process in comparative to other candidate countries, Serbia still managed to be the first country in the region to recover from the crisis with positive result in Q1 2010 and onwards.
Having a ball and chain removed from its leg now by finally locating, finding and arresting loosed general, Serbia is believed to be on the fast track to full EU membership, expected to become an official candidate country by the end of 2011 and to start negotiation process in 2012.
Bright Future for Serbia as Outsourcing Destination
Why is that important for Outsourcing initiatives, you may think? Well, there is a clear trend that countries in the region have managed to attract dozens of outsourcing projects during their own during accession process, creating tens of thousands of jobs respectively.
For example, cities with similar size as Serbian Capital City Belgrade like Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Sophia and Vienna, all of them within one hour flight from Belgrade, are employing today at least ten thousand operators each. Most of those jobs are created in months and years before formal accession, but when it was clear that it would happen on a defined date.
Belgrade is still at a figure below one thousand, but with the potential to create at least the same activity as the best performing cities of ‘New Europe’. Wondered about the ‘Next Location’? Well, there it is.
