More and more Russian companies in Serbia: Do we have commercial properties for them?

More and more Russian companies have been moving their business to Serbia and in the previous month and a half,  since the crisis in Ukraine started, more than 300 companies whose founders are from Russia have been opened in Serbia.

As a result, the demand for office space in Belgrade has also increased.

There is a much lower number of companies whose founders are from Ukraine, and five companies and three entrepreneurs from that country have been registered in Serbia since the beginning of the war.

These are mainly companies engaged in programming, business and management consulting activities, consulting activities in the field of IT, design, wholesale of predominantly fruits and vegetables, construction of residential and non-residential buildings.

Head of Valuation and Advisory Services SEE at CBRE, Nebojsa Nesovanovic,  has told BIZLife that the experience so far has shown that Belgrade and Serbia were the logical choice for the rapid and temporary relocation of business operations from Russia.

„Belgrade was a logical solution because it has direct flights with Russia, and the population is friendly to the Russians. The capital of Serbia is a temporary solution for most of the companies that have come, so their requests have been in accordance with that so far,“ explains Nesovanovic.

Regarding office space, Nesovanovic acknowledges that the offer of commercial properties is better than it was before, noting that it is still the worst in the region.

„Belgrade has the same number of offices as Zagreb, which is twice smaller, and three or five times fewer offices than Sofia and Budapest respectively, which are the cities of the same size as Belgrade. The current vacancy rate is about 5.8 percent, which is quite low. We expect that the growth of, above all, the IT industry will further increase demand, reduce the percentage of vacancies and raise rents. Chronically low availability of business premises does not help us in evaluating Belgrade as a potential destination for the arrival of foreign companies,“ says Nesovanovic.

Izvor: BIZLife

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