December 8 (SeeNews) - Serbia's infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic has said the government expects the country's annual income from tourism to grow fivefold to 5 billion euro ($5.87 billion) in five years.
"Five years ago Serbia could only dream of the tourism income that it has today, of some 1 billion euro," Mihajlovic said during the debates on the 2018 draft budget Parliament, according to a press release issued by the ministry on Thursday.
"All analyses show that in the next five years Serbia can increase the income to some 5 billion euro, which will have a positive effect on employment."
In the ten months through October, the total number of foreign tourist arrivals to Serbia rose 18% year-on-year to 1,292,515, while the total number of overnights spent by foreign tourists increased 17% to 2,737,516, according to data released by Serbia's statistical office.
The government last week adopted the draft budget, which envisages deficit of 28.4 billion dinars ($278.5 million/237.2 million euro) equivalent to 0.6% of the estimated gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018. The budget, built on projections of economic growth of 3.5% in 2018, envisages revenues of 1.178 trillion dinars and expenditure of 1.207 trillion dinars.
($ = 0.851712 euro)