The main goal of our research is to shed a light on the most promising industries, with a potential to drive sustainable growth and development of Serbia’s economy through enhanced international competitiveness and exporting activities. The most promising industries in Serbia are those that possess adequate attributes and provide resources to firms in order for them to produce internationally competitive products while operating profitably, productively and dynamically. Those industries are capable of enhancing their growth, creating profits for company owners, generating employment, becoming even more competitive on global markets and therefore, significantly contributing to overall economic development of a country. Such industries can also be considered the most suitable for firm development. This does not mean that every firm in promising industries will be successful and internationally competitive. Rather, an average firm has greater chances of succeeding in such an industry. Whether a certain firm will succeed depends primarily on firm-level attributes.

Performance-competitiveness matrix, presented in the graph below, provides an overview and comparison of industries based on the characteristics and structure of international competitiveness and overall performance. It depicts the dispersion of 53 tradable industries according to their overall industry performance and their export competitiveness. Each industry is presented by a bubble, while the size of each bubble is determined by the number of firms within an industry. The more firms comprising an industry, the larger is the bubble representing that industry. Quadrant I is comprised of 18 promising industries, both internationally competitive and well performing. These industries have achieved both positive export competitiveness and overall performance in the five-year period, from the strike of the crisis in 2009 until 2013. Industries located in this quadrant can be considered the current stars of Serbia’s economy. Every third (18 out of 53) observed tradable industry is located in this quadrant, meaning that products of these industries were widely competitive on foreign markets, while the performance of these industries was relatively high.

Graph – Performance of industries (2009-2013)