Photo: PixabayStatistical Office of the Republic of Serbia announced that the real growth of Serbia's gross domestic product in the third quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year, amounted to one percent. Growth is recorded in the trade and service sectors, scientific, innovative and technical activities, and the communications sector. Among the branches that recorded a decline, the first place is construction with a 12.4 percent weaker performance.
Commenting on Infobiz television N1 about the causes of the poor performance of the construction industry, Veselin Ražnatović, director of the company Ekspres inženjering and a member of the Union of Serbian Employers, says that it is a question of several factors. "One is that real estate prices have skyrocketed, and there has been a slight drop in demand." The problem is also the prices of materials, which have risen in price from 80 percent to 100 percent," he said.
"People have stopped, because you don't know what will happen tomorrow, and one of the factors that influenced the decline in the construction sector is the lack of workers." That is more important than the prices," emphasizes Ražnatović and adds that the employers themselves will have to do more and get involved in the process of dual education, in the sense of providing scholarships for the education of the necessary personnel.
He believes that it is not a big expense, but it is necessary.
"It is necessary because last year we had seven students enrolled in construction professions at the vocational school in Belgrade. If it weren't for the Turks and Pakistanis, even now the construction industry, which has halved in the previous 10 years, would be in a hopeless situation. And Germany has now made it easier to obtain work permits and immigrant visas, so if we don't do something immediately, in the sense that we educate the profiles we need, in five years there will be no one to work in construction," Ražnatović warns.
As for real estate, he believes that the growth of prices will be stopped, but that neither their decline nor a return to the old prices can be expected.
As he told Infobiz, it has come to the point that the square meter of an apartment in New Belgrade in an old building costs up to 2,000 euros, and you can buy a 40-square-meter apartment for 100,000 euros.
"One of the obstacles to lower real estate prices is the extremely slow process of legalization where tens of thousands of requests are waiting for a solution. If that process were to speed up, there would be up to 50,000 properties on the market, which would increase the number of properties offered for sale." Construction has slowed down and due to the silence of the administration, it is a little more difficult to obtain permits due to unresolved property relations or failure to adopt urban plans. When all this is added together, we arrive at the figure of a 12.4 percent decline in construction compared to last year," said Ražnatović.
Source: n1info.com
