Sectors

Five markets we know from both sides.

HealthHow the same money could deliver more and better care.Where demand outgrows supply, and how a provider stands out.EducationHow the system could reach every child and teach each one better.Where families look for more, and how a private school or faculty earns its premium.ICT & digital infrastructureHow support could follow skills and adoption at home, not headcount.Where the market moves from hours to solutions, and which firms are worth backing.Manufacturing & exportersHow support could help domestic firms grow, not only bring new plants.Where domestic manufacturers can sell more, and what it takes to get there.Agri-foodHow farm support could raise what a hectare earns.Where land earns most, and who can capture the value.All sectorsOverview

Topics

Five questions that cut across every market.

SMEs & entrepreneurshipHow support could reach the small and mid-sized firms able to grow.Where domestic know-how sits, and which firms are worth backing.Competitiveness & investmentHow support could raise productivity, not only jobs.Where firms have underinvested, and what it takes to catch up.Public financeHow each dinar could be tied to a purpose, and pay to the value of work.Where the state will spend, and how to compete for it.Green & digital transitionHow carbon revenue and support could help firms measure and cut, not only pay.Where clean power and carbon data open a market, and who can serve it.Skills & labour marketsHow adults in work and out of it could keep learning what the economy needs.Where to find the people a plan needs, and how to train and keep them.All topicsOverview

Services

Economic analysis for governments, donors and international organisations: we diagnose sectors and public spending, design and cost programmes, and evaluate what they changed.Economic analysis for companies and investors: we size markets and plan entry, find and assess firms to buy, and model what a business is worth.

Sector & value-chain diagnosticsWhere a sector creates value, who leads it, and what holds it back.Public expenditure & functional reviewsWhere public money goes, what it achieves, and how the same budget could do more.Policy & programme designWhom a programme should reach, with what instrument, and how it will be judged.Cost-benefit & fiscal impactWhat a policy or project will cost, year by year, and what it returns.EvaluationWhat a programme changed, for whom, and what would have happened anyway.Market entry studiesHow large the market is, who buys, who competes and what it takes to win.Policy, regulatory & public-demand riskHow incentives, licences, rules and public spending move a business case.Market-entry programmesFrom a study to an operation on the ground: set-up, people, partners and first customers.Business plansA plan a board can approve and a lender or investor can fund.Target search & screeningWhich firms exist, who owns them, and which deserve a closer look.Due diligenceWhat a target’s business, clients and earnings really are, before the price is set.Financial models & valuationWhat a business or an investment is worth, and how it pays back under different scenarios.Surveys & primary dataThe evidence that does not exist yet, collected so that it can be trusted.Custom analytical & performance toolsModels, dashboards and indices, used every time a decision comes back.All servicesOverview

Sector

Health

Evidence

Cataract surgery is a small window on a whole health system: how efficiently public care is organised, and where private providers find room. Serbia performs fewer than half as many operations per inhabitant as the EU, and four in ten still keep the patient in hospital overnight, down from three in four in 2018; in the EU, six in a hundred.

How manyoperations recorded per inhabitant, EU = 100Serbia 47EU 100

Howoperations that mean a night in hospital, of every 100Serbia 40EU 6

Eurostat, surgical procedures by type of care, 2018 and 2023

Context

For ministries, insurers and donorsFor investors and operators

Serbia’s health care is public on paper and partly private in practice. Public insurance covers almost everyone, yet patients pay a large share themselves, mostly for medicines and for care they cannot get quickly, or do not trust, in the public system. In both parts the demand is there; what lags is the way money, staff and supply are organised to meet it.

Public money pays hospitals mainly for the staff and inputs they hold, and primary care largely regardless of results: only a small share of a hospital’s budget follows the cases it treats. Little in that rewards a shorter stay, a day-case operation or a screening that prevents an admission. The question for policy is how to pay so that the same money brings more and better care.

We built the evidence behind the World Bank’s health reviews for Serbia and Montenegro, from European benchmarks and financing flows down to individual insurance claims, and we know the private market alongside it, provider by provider.

The public insurer has for years bought capacity it lacks from private providers in a few niches, such as cataract surgery, IVF and dialysis, on one-year contracts, while most clinics stay small, offer a bit of everything and lean on doctors and referrals from the public system. The accounts show how the money works: public contracts cover fixed costs, while self-paying patients and voluntary insurance carry the margin, and the more a provider depends on the insurer, the slower its cash comes in. The providers that pull ahead specialise where supply is thin, keep their own doctors and balance their payers.

We know this market firm by firm, down to who earns what, and the public system it leans on from years of work on its spending.

Direction

What we do here

Public expenditure & functional reviewsWhere public money goes, what it achieves, and how the same budget could do more.Cost-benefit & fiscal impactWhat a policy or project will cost, year by year, and what it returns.Custom analytical & performance toolsModels, dashboards and indices, used every time a decision comes back.

Examples of our work

For institutionsWorld Bank and UNICEF2020–25

Health spending and performance review for Serbia

We built the quantitative evidence for the review, benchmarking Serbia against the EU, the newer member states and the Western Balkans and comparing its 25 districts. Health accounts, household budget surveys and insurance fund data were brought into one set of figures, which we updated with 2023 data in 2025.

For institutionsWorld Bank2025

Evidence for the health system review of Montenegro

A statistical annex of about 190 figures benchmarks the system internationally and hospital by hospital. Analysis of millions of patient-level insurance records traces which patients and services drive spending, in a hospital and in primary care.

For institutionsWorld Bank2022

Serbian data for the investment case on non-communicable diseases

We assembled and checked the Serbian inputs for a costing model of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes: population projections, labour and output data, risk factors and unit costs from national institutions.

For investorsStrategic investor2025

Private healthcare in Serbia: market study and entry options

The study covers the whole market, built from six years of statutory accounts of every registered private provider. We classified providers by hand into clinical niches that official codes do not show and measured growth, margins, cash conversion, concentration and ownership in each, with an econometric projection of private spending to 2030.

Read the case

For investorsStrategic investor2025–26

Investment cases for acquisition targets in private healthcare

Integrated models rebuild a target’s audited accounts into service lines, volumes, prices and staff. They value it on discounted cash flows checked against regional deal multiples, and test each improvement or add-on as its own business case under three scenarios.

All work

What we do here

Market entry studiesHow large the market is, who buys, who competes and what it takes to win.Target search & screeningWhich firms exist, who owns them, and which deserve a closer look.Financial models & valuationWhat a business or an investment is worth, and how it pays back under different scenarios.

Examples of our work

For investorsStrategic investor2025

Private healthcare in Serbia: market study and entry options

The study covers the whole market, built from six years of statutory accounts of every registered private provider. We classified providers by hand into clinical niches that official codes do not show and measured growth, margins, cash conversion, concentration and ownership in each, with an econometric projection of private spending to 2030.

Read the case

For investorsStrategic investor2025–26

Investment cases for acquisition targets in private healthcare

Integrated models rebuild a target’s audited accounts into service lines, volumes, prices and staff. They value it on discounted cash flows checked against regional deal multiples, and test each improvement or add-on as its own business case under three scenarios.

For institutionsWorld Bank and UNICEF2020–25

Health spending and performance review for Serbia

We built the quantitative evidence for the review, benchmarking Serbia against the EU, the newer member states and the Western Balkans and comparing its 25 districts. Health accounts, household budget surveys and insurance fund data were brought into one set of figures, which we updated with 2023 data in 2025.

For institutionsWorld Bank2025

Evidence for the health system review of Montenegro

A statistical annex of about 190 figures benchmarks the system internationally and hospital by hospital. Analysis of millions of patient-level insurance records traces which patients and services drive spending, in a hospital and in primary care.

For institutionsWorld Bank2022

Serbian data for the investment case on non-communicable diseases

We assembled and checked the Serbian inputs for a costing model of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes: population projections, labour and output data, risk factors and unit costs from national institutions.

All work

Earlier experience

Before Econominess, Nemanja Šormaz worked on how the public health system is organised, staffed and paid: as special adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister for public administration from 2015 to 2017, and then as a consultant on public pay reform.

2015–2017Special adviser

Rightsizing the public sector

Review of the functional analyses of the health and education systems, and co-authorship of the government’s analysis of public administration, whose health chapter compared staff costs with Europe and set out a move to paying for the volume and value of services.

2018Public finance expert; short-term expert

Pay in health care

Analysis of health workers’ pay and of their departure from the public system for the ministry in charge of the wage law, and a redesigned public pay scale that rewards clinical expertise and lets doctors and nurses progress within their grade.

Talk to Nemanja Šormaz

The other side

Where demand outgrows supply, and how a provider stands out.How the same money could deliver more and better care.

Read this as an investorRead this as an institution
Next sectorEducation

Contact

Tell us the decision in front of you, and when you need it.

nemanja@econominess.rs

Company profile, PDF · Belgrade, Serbia