14/09/21

EUROPE: Serbian companies took more than €1 billion to tax havens in 2020, according to new figures.

As published on serbianmonitor.com, Tuesday 14 September, 2021.

Biznis.rs reported said that Serbian companies made payments of more than a billion Euro to offshore zones in 2020.

According to National Bank of Serbia (NBS) figures, Serbian companies made payments of 1.06 billion euros to offshore zones. Biznis.rs also said that was 22.6 percent less than a year earlier, adding that those payments totaled 472.2 million euros in the first half of 2021. It said that the amount was 11.9 percent lower than in the same period of 2020.

NBS sources told the portal that about 80 percent of those transactions were payments for exports (379 million euro including 115.2 million from vehicle retail companies), base metal production (93.2 million euro) and ore and metal exploitation (60.9 million euro).

Income from offshore zones in the first half of this year, totalled 652.5 million euro or 76.9 percent more than in the same period a year earlier, most of it in loans from connected foreign companies (259.2 million euro), the NBS sources said.

There has been a jump in payment transactions with Hong Kong, which have grown over the past six years, and this growth is largely the result of direct investments from this country in Serbian manufacturing and mining companies.

Viewed by country, the largest payments were made to Hong Kong (EUR 379.3 million), Singapore (EUR 56.4 million), Lebanon (EUR 10.6 million), the Seychelles (EUR 7.3 million) and the British Virgin Islands (EUR 5.7 million), reports the National Bank of Serbia.