Trade and Competitiveness

During the early 1980s the share of trade in Yugoslavia’s GDP rose sharply. However, despite a depreciation of the dinar in 1983, disappointing export performance led to the emergence of large current account deficits. This acted to constrain imports, and by the middle of the decade the share of trade was roughly the same as it had been ten years earlier. In 1990, Serbia’s share of trade and exports in GDP (58 and 26 per cent respectively) were nearly the same as those of Czechoslovakia, which was then only about to embark on its economic transition. This comparison treats Serbian trade with the other republics of former-Yugoslavia as external...