Serbia's ICT export surplus reaches €3.53 billion in 2025

The National Bank of Serbia (NBS), in the regular monthly report of its Balance of Payments and Foreign Reserves Department, reported a 2025 surplus on international information and communication technology services trade of €3.529 billion (around 414.3 billion RSD).

Year-on-year growth on the 2024 surplus of €3.21 billion came to 10 percent. In December 2025, ICT services exports reached €471 million, the highest monthly figure on record for the sector and up 12 percent on December 2024.

ICT in the export mix

In the overall structure of Serbian services exports, the ICT sector accounts for 51.8 percent, ahead of tourism and transport. Within combined goods and services exports it accounts for 11.2 percent.

ICT sector labour market:

• Total employment: 152,000 people (Statistical Office, April 2026)
• Average gross wage in March 2026: 274,300 RSD (around €2,336)
• Position versus the national average: 64 percent above

An asymmetric mix, software dominates

More than 80 percent of ICT services exports are made up of software services in the broad sense. The remaining 20 percent covers telecoms services, BPO and hardware configuration.

Largest exporters include:

• Endava: over 4,000 employees in Serbia, clients include BMW, Mastercard, Worldpay
• Ubisoft Belgrade: 380 development engineers
• Microsoft Development Center Serbia: 270 employees
• NCR, Levi9, Veriff, Endless, Comtrade Group
• Domestic: ASEE, NF Innova, HTEC (export share above 50 percent of revenue)

Serbian Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Mihailo Vesovic spoke on 26 May at a services exports roundtable.

The 10 percent growth in the ICT sector is the only sector rate that has not fallen below double digits in the past five years, even in the face of recessionary pressures in the European Union.

Vesovic highlighted that the ratio of exporting to importing ICT firms stands at 11 to 1, pointing to the maturity of the domestic industry.

Weaknesses, low product share

Despite the brisk pace, the export mix is dominated by services, with only 20 percent product share. IT Network platform director Marko Tomanovic, in research published on 19 May, quantified the growth split.

Over the past seven years, while ICT services exports grew at an average annual rate of 18 percent, ICT product exports in the same period have grown only 3.1 percent, pointing to a structural limitation of the sector and exposure to changes in labour costs.

In the products segment, leading domestic firms include MikroElektronika, BlueChip, Strawberry Energy and Comtrade.

Science, Technological Development and Innovation Minister Milan Bakic announced a support programme on 22 May at the Future of IT summit in Belgrade.

An ICT product export incentive programme worth €11 million for the 2026-2028 period, through the Development Fund and the Innovation Activity Fund, with subsidy rates of 25 to 40 percent of qualifying development costs.

Is the growth sustainable in 2026

The open question is whether 10 percent growth is sustainable if global ICT services demand cools in the second half of 2026.

A fresh Gartner report dated 14 May projects global IT spending growth of just 5.2 percent in 2026, three percentage points below the earlier forecast.

A follow-up on how domestic exporters respond to the global cycle will be published shortly.