Serbian average salary 28,267 dinars

Well...at least it's improving. I did a conversion, it comes out to about 491$ American.

It is a good showing for 1987 but not for 2007.Serbia must institute radical free market economic plans in 2007 to speed up its development .

The cost of basic items has to be lowered and all the people of Serbia should have the disciple not put their prices up by more than 3% a year.

What is needed is for the Government to give everyone free land to build a house on. This will not be good for Banks, but it will be good for people.

Luciano,

I actually greatly appreciate many of your comments. Having lived in the Balkans for a while and dealt with the crazy system out there, I have a couple things to point out that you may not have been aware of. I am not an economist at all, these are just personal opinions based on experience and deal primarily with micro economic situations, which I feel needs reform first before macro economics can have a solid foundation.

The level of service in Serbia (and Montenegro especially) is fairly appalling. The attitude at the grassroots level needs to change first.

Since no one tips waiters, and salespeople do not receive commission, there is no motivation to offer a higher level of service. Often when walking into a store to make a purchase the salesperson will act as if you are bothering them. Anyone who's been to the Balkans has experienced this kind of frustration, even Serbs complain (After living in the US for 2 years my wife has a really hard time dealing with the way things work out there now).

I nearly got stuck on vacation in Montenegro once as I almost ran out of money. There were no banks, no ATM's, no one accepted travelers checks, no accepting MasterCard or Visa (Oddly enough Diner's Club was in common usage), and I had no way to exchange Kuna or Bosnian Marks. We found one ATM eventually, but it wouldn't give money, and finally I found a hotel that would give me cash for my visa card (After 2 very scary days of looking), and I was able to exchange my Kuna and Marks through the local gangster. Its changed a little in Montenegro, but it illustrates the point, how can you run a tourism based economy when your tourists can not have easy access to money on demand to spend.

Its also a "Cash & Carry" type of society and does not lend itself to easy adaptation to credit or a real trust of the Banking institutions (After Milosevic, who can blame them?). Most Serbs who borrow loans and get credit cards are getting themselves into trouble and borrowing more then they can afford, and I think this alone will have a serious negative impact on the spending power of the population in the future. I predict massive defaults on such loans in the near future.

I think in the past radical economic plans usually end up with either gangsters (Russia) or foreign interests (Kosovo) owning all the major companies in a country. China, in my opinion has found the best balance so far and appears on the surface to be doing remarkably. Slovenia rejected the initial recommendations of the EU on how to handle their emerging economy, and they've done brilliantly with such a strategy. Adopting the Euro actually seems to be causing them problems at this point, although I am sure that will work itself out in the future.

What Serbia needs most is to improve their level of service and their domestic market, only then will they be able to understand International markets. I noticed a great difference in attitudes between those countries that were formally under the Ottomans, and those countries that had been under the Austrians.

The good thing is last time I was in Serbia there were much larger numbers of tourists and foreigners. When I first went there (around the time Milosevic was arrested) I seriously think I was the only foreigner around, at least the only tourist.

I'm actually amazed at this year's average salary, if you think about it, that's almost half the minimum wage in the US. Considering most of the families there that I know make a significant portion of their salary via grey market activities, I'm guessing the real wage is much higher.

Now is a great time to invest in Night Clubs and Café's. I seriously think there can be no end to the number of night clubs in Belgrade. I've always wondered where the heck people there get money to go out all the time, yet somehow they do.

Well...at least it's improving. I did a conversion, it comes out to about 491$ American.

It is a good showing for 1987 but not for 2007.Serbia must institute radical free market economic plans in 2007 to speed up its development .

The cost of basic items has to be lowered and all the people of Serbia should have the disciple not put their prices up by more than 3% a year.

What is needed is for the Government to give everyone free land to build a house on. This will not be good for Banks, but it will be good for people.

Luciano,

I actually greatly appreciate many of your comments. Having lived in the Balkans for a while and dealt with the crazy system out there, I have a couple things to point out that you may not have been aware of. I am not an economist at all, these are just personal opinions based on experience and deal primarily with micro economic situations, which I feel needs reform first before macro economics can have a solid foundation.

The level of service in Serbia (and Montenegro especially) is fairly appalling. The attitude at the grassroots level needs to change first.

Since no one tips waiters, and salespeople do not receive commission, there is no motivation to offer a higher level of service. Often when walking into a store to make a purchase the salesperson will act as if you are bothering them. Anyone who's been to the Balkans has experienced this kind of frustration, even Serbs complain (After living in the US for 2 years my wife has a really hard time dealing with the way things work out there now).

I nearly got stuck on vacation in Montenegro once as I almost ran out of money. There were no banks, no ATM's, no one accepted travelers checks, no accepting MasterCard or Visa (Oddly enough Diner's Club was in common usage), and I had no way to exchange Kuna or Bosnian Marks. We found one ATM eventually, but it wouldn't give money, and finally I found a hotel that would give me cash for my visa card (After 2 very scary days of looking), and I was able to exchange my Kuna and Marks through the local gangster. Its changed a little in Montenegro, but it illustrates the point, how can you run a tourism based economy when your tourists can not have easy access to money on demand to spend.

Its also a "Cash & Carry" type of society and does not lend itself to easy adaptation to credit or a real trust of the Banking institutions (After Milosevic, who can blame them?). Most Serbs who borrow loans and get credit cards are getting themselves into trouble and borrowing more then they can afford, and I think this alone will have a serious negative impact on the spending power of the population in the future. I predict massive defaults on such loans in the near future.

I think in the past radical economic plans usually end up with either gangsters (Russia) or foreign interests (Kosovo) owning all the major companies in a country. China, in my opinion has found the best balance so far and appears on the surface to be doing remarkably. Slovenia rejected the initial recommendations of the EU on how to handle their emerging economy, and they've done brilliantly with such a strategy. Adopting the Euro actually seems to be causing them problems at this point, although I am sure that will work itself out in the future.

What Serbia needs most is to improve their level of service and their domestic market, only then will they be able to understand International markets. I noticed a great difference in attitudes between those countries that were formally under the Ottomans, and those countries that had been under the Austrians.

The good thing is last time I was in Serbia there were much larger numbers of tourists and foreigners. When I first went there (around the time Milosevic was arrested) I seriously think I was the only foreigner around, at least the only tourist.

I'm actually amazed at this year's average salary, if you think about it, that's almost half the minimum wage in the US. Considering most of the families there that I know make a significant portion of their salary via grey market activities, I'm guessing the real wage is much higher.

Now is a great time to invest in Night Clubs and Café's. I seriously think there can be no end to the number of night clubs in Belgrade. I've always wondered where the heck people there get money to go out all the time, yet somehow they do.