SME Policy Index for Western Balkans and Türkiye 2026 – Economy Profile for Serbia

Serbia: SME definition and data coverage

SME definition

In Serbia, the classification of enterprises by size is established by Article 6 of the Law on Accounting, which applies a two-of-three criteria approach (Table 1). Enterprises are classified into a size category if they satisfy at least two of the following three thresholds: 1) average number of employees; 2) annual business revenue; 3) total assets – as determined on the balance sheet date. Microenterprises are those not exceeding two of the following: 10 employees, EUR 700 000 in revenue or EUR 350 000 in total assets; small enterprises exceed the micro thresholds on at least two criteria but remain below 50 employees, EUR 8 million in revenue and EUR 4 million in assets; medium-sized enterprises fall below 250 employees, EUR 40 million in revenue and EUR 20 million in assets; enterprises exceeding at least two medium-sized enterprise thresholds are classified as large enterprises (European Commission, 2003[1]; Government of the Republic of Serbia, 2019[2]).

Table 1. Definition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Serbia

Category	EU definition	Serbia definition
Micro	< 10 employees ≤ EUR 2 million turnover or balance sheet	< 10 employees ≤ EUR 700 000 annual business revenue ≤ EUR 350 000 total assets (at least 2 of the 3 criteria must be met)
Small	< 50 employees ≤ EUR 10 million turnover or balance sheet	< 50 employees ≤ EUR 8 million annual business revenue ≤ EUR 4 million total assets (at least 2 of the 3 criteria must be met)
Medium-sized	< 250 employees ≤ EUR 50 million turnover or ≤ EUR 43 million balance sheet	< 250 employees ≤ EUR 40 million annual business revenue ≤ EUR 20 million total assets (at least 2 of the 3 criteria must be met)

Notes: Serbian law applies a two-of-three criteria approach: an enterprise is assigned to a size category if it satisfies at least two of the three thresholds (employees, revenue, assets) on the balance sheet date. Thresholds shown are the upper limits for each category.

Sources: European Commission (2003[1]); Government of the Republic of Serbia (2019[2]).

Data coverage

The sector overview presented above draws principally on structural business statistics published by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), supplemented by Eurostat datasets for trade and macroeconomic context. Table 2 summarises the key data dimensions, their availability and currency. Serbia’s Structural Business Statistics (SBS) infrastructure is among the most comprehensive in the Western Balkans and Türkiye (WBT): SORS publishes a full cross-tabulation of enterprise counts, employment, turnover, value added, production value and personnel costs by NACE Rev. 2 sector and enterprise size class, using the European Union’s (EU) standard four-class breakdown (micro, small, medium and large defined by employment bands). Long time series are available, with the most recent reference year being 2023 at the time of drafting. Serbia is one of the few WBT economies whose SBS data are also published through Eurostat’s harmonised SBS series, providing an additional layer of methodological assurance. Foreign trade disaggregated by enterprise characteristics is available through Eurostat with a long time series extending through 2024, including joint breakdowns by size class and NACE Rev. 2 economic activity; SORS itself does not publish trade data in this format. The principal gap in Serbia’s statistical infrastructure concerns business demography: SORS does not maintain a dedicated enterprise demography framework and does not publish any official statistics on enterprise birth, death or survival rates; high-growth firms; or gazelles. Net entry can be approximated from year-on-year changes in SBS enterprise stocks, and SORS issues annual press releases on enterprise counts and capital ownership; systematic demographic analysis of the type produced by statistical offices in several peer economies is, however, not available.

Table 2. Core statistical sources for the SME sector overview, Serbia

Data source	Size-class breakdown	Sectoral breakdown	Size × sector cross-tab	Time series	Key indicators
Structural Business sSatistics (SBS)	Yes (micro, small, medium, large)	Yes (NACE Rev. 2)	Yes	Long series; most recent reference year 2023	Number of enterprises; persons employed; turnover; production value; value added at factor costs; personnel costs; value added per person employed – also published by Eurostat (harmonised SBS series)
Foreign trade by enterprise characteristics	Yes (micro, small, medium, large)	Yes (NACE Rev. 2)	Yes	Long series through 2024	Number of exporting firms; export value by size class and NACE sector (and, derivatively, average export value per firm and export growth) – available through Eurostat; not published by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS)
Business demography	No dedicated statistics	No	No	Annual enterprise counts derivable from SBS stocks	No published birth/death rates, survival rates, high-growth firms or gazelles; net entry can be approximated from year-on-year changes in SBS enterprise stocks; SORS publishes annual press releases on firm counts and capital ownership

Sources: SORS (2025[3]); Eurostat (2026[4]; 2025[5]).

Beyond the publicly available statistical sources discussed above, the assessment of individual policy dimensions draws on standardised statistical questionnaires administered by the OECD to national counterpart institutions. For Serbia, the principal respondents were SORS, the National Bank of Serbia, the Public Procurement Office, the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of Mining and Energy, with supplementary inputs from the Bankruptcy Supervision Agency. The questionnaires cover nine thematic areas aligned with the policy dimensions of the SME Policy Index, plus a general statistics module on structural business demographics. Of the approximately 160 indicators requested at the economy level, Serbia provided data for roughly half with meaningful multi-year coverage – the most complete response among the WBT economies. Coverage is the strongest in the general statistics module, where SORS provided near-complete enterprise, employment and demography data, and across women’s entrepreneurship, innovation and internationalisation, where full or near-full time series were submitted. Digital transformation reporting was the most detailed among all WBT economies, with the overwhelming majority of indicators populated. The weakest dimension is the green economy, where the main questionnaire was returned with minimal data, although supplementary worksheets on CO₂ emissions, energy consumption and environmental economy value added were well populated. A distinctive feature of Serbia’s response is the availability of Community Innovation Survey (CIS)-based innovation data and private equity and venture capital series – indicators that are largely absent in other WBT economies. Table 3 provides a dimension-by-dimension summary.

Table 3. Statistical data coverage by thematic area, Serbia

Thematic area	Coverage	Indicators reported	Principal gaps
Structural Business Statistics	Substantial	Enterprises, employment and value added by size class (2019-2023); SME share in merchandise exports (2019-2023); enterprise birth and death rates (2019-2023); enterprise age structure by cohort (2019-2023); employment share of young enterprises (2019-2023); sectoral breakdown by NACE Rev. 2	Women-owned enterprises by size class; high-growth firms and gazelles
Entrepreneurial learning and women’s entrepreneurship (Dimension 1)	Substantial	Share of majority female-owned businesses (2019-2024); share of women chief executive officers (2019-2020); female self-employment rate (2019‑2020); share of government financing to female-owned businesses (2019-2024); women in state-funded SME trainings (2020-2024); government contracts awarded to female-owned enterprises (2023-2024); share of women graduating in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) tertiary fields (2019-2024); share of female university graduates (2019-2024); vocational education and training (VET) work-based learning (2021‑2024)	Intellectual property (IP) registrations by women; STEM VET graduates; growth rate of women-owned enterprises (single-year 2020 only)
Bankruptcy and second chance (Dimension 2)	Partial	Average time of liquidation proceedings (2019-2024); SME bankruptcy share, stock and flow indicators (2019-2024); court-confirmed reorganisations (2019-2024)	Cost of liquidation and reorganisation proceedings; time to discharge and credit score clearing; non-performing loan ratios; debt, liquidity and productivity ratios of failing SMEs; business-to-business payment delays
Public procurement (Dimension 5b)	Moderate	SME share in total value of public contracts (2019-2024); SME participation rate in tenders (2019-2024); share and value of contracts awarded to foreign operators (2019-2024); green procurement criteria (2023-2024); e‑procurement participation (2020, single-year)	Payment delays from public authorities; social criteria in procurement; SME complaint filing and resolution rates
Access to finance (Dimension 6)	Moderate	Outstanding business loans and SME share (2019-2024); interest rates for SMEs and large enterprises (2019-2024); SME collateral requirements (2019-2024); credit guarantee scheme volumes (2019-2024); private equity fund count and volumes (2019-2024); venture capital volumes (2019‑2024); population with a bank account (2021, 2024)	Total collateral as a share of lending; loan application and rejection rates; government direct loans; leasing and factoring volumes; crowdfunding; fintech indicators; savings product penetration; green financial product awareness
Enterprise skills and innovation (Dimensions 8a and 8b)	Substantial	Long-term unemployment and over-qualification rates (2019-2024); SME training incidence (2020, single-year); social enterprises (2022-2024); co‑operatives (2019-2024); SME product, process and environmental innovation rates (CIS rounds 2020, 2022, 2024); GERD and BERD (2019‑2024); BERD by SMEs (2019-2023); direct government research and development (R&D) funding (2019-2024); collaborative innovation (2024, single-year)	Job vacancy rate; tax incentives for business R&D; IP filing and enforcement by SMEs; social entrepreneur demographics
Green economy (Dimension 9)	Limited	Main questionnaire returned with minimal data; supplementary worksheets provide CO₂ emissions by NACE sector (2019-2023), energy consumption by industry (2021-2022) and environmental economy value added by sector (2019-2022); social enterprises (2022-2024)	All SME-specific indicators absent: public support for green production, resource efficiency, circularity and renewable energy; environmental management systems; ecolabels and green products; disaster risk preparedness and insurance
Internationalisation (Dimension 10)	Substantial	SME share in total goods exports (2019-2024); government expenditure on export support (2019-2024); SME recipients of export support (2020-2024); average export value per exporting SME (2019-2024); total SME export value (2019-2024); share of SMEs in cross-border supply chains (2019‑2024)	Export growth rate; share of SMEs integrated into global value chains; share of exporting SMEs with international certifications; SME export composition by sector
Digital transformation (Dimension 11)	Substantial	E-commerce sales and value by enterprise size (2019-2024); share of enterprises with a website (2019-2024); R&D personnel in business (2019‑2024); ICT training provision (2019-2024, with gaps); ICT security measures, documents and incidents (2019-2024); artificial intelligence technology adoption (2020, 2023-2024); digital intensity level (2021, 2023); public support for digitalisation (2021-2024); innovation infrastructure (2019‑2024); robotics, 3D printing, Internet of Things and big data (single-year snapshots)	Digital payment acceptance; business software adoption (single-year 2023 only); most technology-adoption indicators are single-year or two-year snapshots

Notes: GERD: gross domestic expenditure on research and development; BERD: business expenditure on research and development. Coverage ratings reflect data submitted through OECD statistical questionnaires by national counterpart institutions. “Substantial” denotes that a majority of indicators were reported with multi-year series. “Moderate” indicates that core indicators are available but important sub-indicators are missing or reported as single-year snapshots only. “Partial” means fewer than half of the indicators were provided with meaningful coverage. “Limited” applies where less than one-quarter of indicators were provided or data are restricted to single-year estimates. Ratings reflect data as received; some gaps may be addressable through alternative national or international sources.

Serbia’s questionnaire response provides the broadest quantitative foundation for SME policy assessment among the WBT economies, with five dimensions rated substantial and meaningful data across all but one thematic area. The combination of Eurostat-harmonised SBS data, CIS-based innovation metrics and size‑disaggregated trade series offers a level of analytical depth that is unmatched elsewhere in the WBT. The principal constraint remains the green economy dimension, where the main questionnaire was largely empty, and the absence of a dedicated business demography framework at SORS, which limits the scope for systematic analysis of enterprise dynamics beyond what can be inferred from year-on-year SBS stock changes.