Serbians Head Abroad to Buy Cheaper Goods

A difficult economic situation has forced an increasing number of Serbians to travel to neighbouring countries in order to buy cheaper clothes and food. Every weekend, more than one hundred Belgrade residents go on shopping trips to Szegedin, a Hungarian town near the Serbian border, tourist agencies say.

“Lower food prices and big clothing sales are the main reasons for traveling to Hungary. Every Saturday we have around one hundred people who go shopping abroad just to save money,” Eugen Paul from Lasta, one of Belgrade's leading tourist agencies, told Balkan Insight.

An organised trip to Szegedin costs around €15 per person, and since the prices there are often twice as low as in Serbia, the trip easily pays off. Many travelers buy goods not only for themselves, but also to resell in markets in Serbia.

“Ten years later I am back to my old business- selling imported food on the marketplace. People buy cheese, salami, chocolates, even washing powder, because prices for Hungarian goods are 20 per cent lower than in Serbia,” said Ivan Trajkovic, a vendor at one of Belgrade's open-air markets in Zemun.

Shopping trips abroad were very popular during the Milosevic rule in the 1990s, when Serbia faced economic sanctions and people travelled to neighbouring countries to buy food, gas and cigarettes.

According to local tourist agencies, the type of people who shop abroad regularly varies- there are young people who go to buy clothing, and there are also families who usually buy food.

The agencies plan to expand their shopping tours to the other countries of the region, such as Austria and Romania, because of the growing interest shown by Serbians.

“Interest in so called passport shopping is for sure caused by the economic crisis and the bad situation in our country. Our food is still expensive, we do not have big sales and people must find a way to cope and this is maybe the easiest current solution,” tourist agent Paul concluded.

High food prices in Serbia are often attributed to a relatively high trade margin, which is around 23 per cent, while in most EU countries the state trade margin is around 10 per cent.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Trade, by the end of the coming week the Serbian government intends to adopt regulations that lower the  trade margin for basic food to 10 per cent. It is expected that prices for sugar, meat, milk and oil will drop by 15 per cent.