French companies invest in Serbian companies that export products to Russia – company "Lohr" starts production of transporters in Bačka Topola

French companies have realized the advantages of the Agreement on free trade with Russia and they invest in the companies in Serbia that export goods to Russian market. This is the message from the yesterday’s (May 29, 2007) meeting in the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia.

French company "Lohr" will invest 7m EUR in the factory for production of transporters for passenger automobiles in Bačka Topola and it will hire 220 people. That company, the world leader in production of specialized transporters plans to export complete annual production in Bačka Topola, worth 20m EUR, to Russia.

The new factory in Bačka Topola will be settled on the location of former building company "Prvi maj", and the production should start very soon. Brigit Lafarge, the advisor for central and east Europe in the Chamber of Commerce of Paris, pointed out that Serbian market was very interesting to French investors and that there was space for cooperation in the following period. She added that the Chamber of Commerce of Paris with the departments comprised 310,000 companies and that it annually served about 6,000 companies that wanted to appear on the foreign markets.

According to the data of the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, Serbian export to France in the first three months of this year amounted to 64.4m USD, while the import from France in the same period amounted to 97.4m USD. Coverage of import by export in foreign trade exchange between these two countries in 2006 amounted to nearly 70%.

Leading ten Serbian exporters exported about 65% of goods to France last year. The products that were most exported in 2006 were pneumatic tyres for passenger automobiles, hot-rolled products around 3 mm thick, as well as raspberries.