The structural changes of the Serbian merchandise trade during transition process: Comparative analysis of main trade indicators

Abstract

The article discussesthe structural changes in exports and imports during the transition process in Serbia. To address this issue, we calculated several indicators of the Serbian merchandise trade in the 2000-2018 period. After having computed the absolute growth of export and import and the values of intra-industry trade indices in the period under review, we compared the similarity of the export structure of Serbia and the import structure of the EU, which was used as a referent structure. To detect possible quality improvement of the Serbian trade sector, we analyzed qualitative changes of Serbia's exports (imports), through tendencies of goods at higher levels of processing, using more classifications, as such possible improvement would create important conditions for a sustainable and stronger export growth. After the calculation of trade specialization indicators, all obtained results were compared with those achieved by other Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies. The conclusion is that, despite strong Serbian export growth from 2000 to 2018 and moderate structural improvements, there are no conclusive signs of sufficient convergence to the EU import demand structure or sufficient growth of the share of goods at higher levels of processing in Serbian exports to imply the significant structural improvement of Serbia's trade, compared with CEE countries.