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

Manufacturing & exporters

Evidence

In how much it exports, Serbia keeps pace with the EU: relative to the size of its economy, it exports about as much as the average member state. What sets it apart is who does the selling. About one exporter in ten is foreign-controlled, and together they ship more than two thirds of the goods; across the EU, under half.

By whomgoods exports, of every 100 eurosforeign-controlled firms 69domestic firms 31EU 47

Eurostat, trade by type of ownership, 2023; EU share summed over member states

Context

For ministries, agencies and donorsFor manufacturers, buyers and investors

Serbia has built its exports the way central Europe did, through plants that foreign investors built, though with more assembly and less value added at home. Domestic manufacturers sell far less abroad and few supply the investors next door, although mid-sized firms are closer to their European peers in productivity than the large plants are. Money alone rarely closes the gap: what they lack most is knowledge of the markets they could sell to, a way in, and a plan a lender or partner can back.

Support for industry has been paid mostly by the job: a share of the wages for each new post in a new or expanded plant, with land, tax holidays or capital grants for the largest projects. It brought investment and employment while labour was plentiful, but it rewards headcount rather than value added, and domestic firms, though eligible, have received only a small share. Programmes that help local firms become suppliers, export or modernise are small, and few are evaluated for what they changed. The question for policy is what support brings in value added, exports and local supply, and how programmes could reach the domestic firms able to grow.

We lead a multi-year evaluation of a supplier development programme, following manufacturers year by year in their accounts and on the shop floor, and analysed export and investment support in four manufacturing sectors for the ministry in charge of the economy.

For a domestic manufacturer the next market is often next door: foreign plants that import much of what they use, and export markets that few small firms reach. Those that become suppliers tend to become more productive. In the firms we follow, certificates are rarely the gap; costing, planning and production management are, along with someone inside the firm who owns them. The firms worth backing know what each product costs, turn down work below cost and sell to more than one buyer.

We help manufacturers and their investors size a market and a way into it, test a firm against its peers on its own accounts, and build the business plan behind the next investment, with the public support it can draw on.

Direction

What we do here

EvaluationWhat a programme changed, for whom, and what would have happened anyway.Policy & programme designWhom a programme should reach, with what instrument, and how it will be judged.Sector & value-chain diagnosticsWhere a sector creates value, who leads it, and what holds it back.

Examples of our work

For institutionsSME Hub, Swiss development cooperation2025–26Lead consultant

Multi-year evaluation of a supplier development programme

A panel of manufacturing firms is visited on site every year, with owners and the heads of finance, production, sales and people, while the filed accounts of every firm in the programme are tracked alongside. Each co-financed tool is scored for whether it is still in use, and results are read against prices, local wages and sector employment.

For institutionsPublic Policy Secretariat and Ministry of Economy2019–20

Investment and export support for four manufacturing sectors: sector diagnostics and programme design

Official enterprise statistics and company accounts by detailed activity over a decade, trade data and a review of ministry, agency and donor programmes, set against five EU comparators. The four sectors are food, machinery and equipment, rubber and plastics, and wood and furniture.

All work

What we do here

Market entry studiesHow large the market is, who buys, who competes and what it takes to win.Business plansA plan a board can approve and a lender or investor can fund.Policy, regulatory & public-demand riskHow incentives, licences, rules and public spending move a business case.

Examples of our work

For institutionsSME Hub, Swiss development cooperation2025–26Lead consultant

Multi-year evaluation of a supplier development programme

A panel of manufacturing firms is visited on site every year, with owners and the heads of finance, production, sales and people, while the filed accounts of every firm in the programme are tracked alongside. Each co-financed tool is scored for whether it is still in use, and results are read against prices, local wages and sector employment.

For institutionsPublic Policy Secretariat and Ministry of Economy2019–20

Investment and export support for four manufacturing sectors: sector diagnostics and programme design

Official enterprise statistics and company accounts by detailed activity over a decade, trade data and a review of ministry, agency and donor programmes, set against five EU comparators. The four sectors are food, machinery and equipment, rubber and plastics, and wood and furniture.

All work

Earlier experience

Between 2014 and 2025, as executive director of a Belgrade economic think tank, Nemanja Šormaz worked on close to twenty projects on manufacturers, exporters and SMEs, most of them as manager, coordinator or lead author.

2014–2018Project coordinator and co-author

Firm-level analysis of the whole economy

The first analyses of Serbian business built on the accounts of every registered company, tens of thousands of active firms, joined to trade data for about a thousand products. They include a survey of more than a thousand firms and an index that ranks 114 tradable sectors by their potential.

2016–2018Coordinator of the research team

Value chains in manufacturing

Value-chain studies of four manufacturing sectors in depth and eight more by desk review, built on more than a hundred company interviews, as the analytical base for industrial policy.

2020–2025Co-organiser and co-author

SME100: leading exporting SMEs

A yearly selection and exhibition of leading exporting SMEs, chosen on set criteria from the accounts of some 17,700 firms, and surveys of up to 1,500 firms a year on how they grow, finance themselves and export.

2018–2025Project manager, co-author and supervising director

Foreign investment, state aid and supplier links

A policy study of state aid built on a profile of several hundred greenfield foreign investors and, as supervising director, a census of firms controlled from one of Serbia’s main trading partners.

Talk to Nemanja Šormaz

The other side

Where domestic manufacturers can sell more, and what it takes to get there.How support could help domestic firms grow, not only bring new plants.

Read this as an investorRead this as an institution
Next sectorAgri-food

Contact

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

nemanja@econominess.rs

Company profile, PDF · Belgrade, Serbia