BELGRADE: The UAE has approved a $400m loan to Serbia, boosting the Balkan country’s drive to find investors from outside the crisis-hit eurozone to help pull it out of recession.
Serbian finance minister Mladjan Dinkic, visiting Abu Dhabi, said yesterday the emirate’s Etihad airline could also become a strategic partner of Belgrade’s loss-making JAT Airways. With its traditional trading partners in the euro zone struggling with a debt crisis, Serbia is looking to other potential investors such as Russia, China and the UAE. The country, which is a candidate to join the European Union, is hoping to secure 2 percent growth this year after a drop in gross domestic product of about 1.9 percent in 2012.
Under the loan deal with the UAE’s development fund, some $200m would be invested in irrigation throughout Serbia, the finance ministry said in a statement. Reuters
