IMF-塞尔维亚共和国_若干问题（英）-2025.7_26页_3mb

Serbia's Economic Growth and Income Gap: Serbia has maintained growth comparable to regional peers over recent decades, with recent increases in labor force participation and GDP per capita. However, a large income gap with the EU persists, primarily due to low total factor productivity (TFP), while future growth potential may be constrained by limited room for additional factor accumulation.

Structural Challenges: Key weaknesses include governance inefficiencies, a heavy labor tax burden hindering workforce participation, skill mismatches (high levels of overqualification), distortive state influence in markets, limited R&D and innovation, and shallow financial markets that restrict access to finance for micro-enterprises and startups.

Policy Recommendations: To enhance productivity and growth, reforms should focus on strengthening governance and reducing corruption, addressing labor market rigidities and tax wedges, resolving skill mismatches through education-corporate collaboration, improving the business environment by reducing SOE dominance, boosting R&D and digitalization, and deepening capital markets.

Potential Impact of Reforms: Partial closure of structural gaps could significantly boost medium-term GDP growth. For instance, governance reforms could yield up to 5% growth benefits, while labor market and business regulations reforms could add 2.5% and 2%, respectively, fostering sustainable convergence with the EU by mid-century through productivity gains.