December 15 (SeeNews) - Serbia's prime minister Ana Brnabic has said the government plans to introduce a two-year tax exemption for startups starting in 2018, the government said on Friday.
With the move, the government aims to encourage the launch of new businesses, Brnabic said on Thursday during a conference in Belgrade, as quoted in a statement by the government.
In October, finance minister Dusan Vujovic said he supported the proposal of the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) for the introduction of the tax exemption. "I support this initiative because it is very important to improve the chances of young people tostart a business. The tax exemption would not be a big budget expense," Vujovic said back then.
An analysis of NALED shows that at least 8,000 citizens will take advantage of the proposed tax exemption, while the cost for the budget would stand at 1.9 billion dinars ($188 million/159.5 million euro) in 2018, or one-eighth of what the government spends on incentives for start-ups, the government said.
The average annual number of startups in Serbia declined to 33,000 from 45,500 over the last 10 years, the government said, citing data from the country's Business Registers Agency.