07.11.2023.
Excellent results achieved by Serbian Defence Industry
The fifth meeting of the Defence Industry Council was held in Belgrade today. The meeting was chaired by State Secretary at the Ministry of Defence Mile Jelić, who is also the president of the Council.
Assistant Minister for Material Resources Nenad Miloradović, PhD, vice presidents of the Council from the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Internal and Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Finance, Council members who are also presidents of supervisory boards in the factories, representatives of PE "Yugoimport-SDPR", and directors of 17 factories that make up the Serbian Defence Industry Group attended the meeting.The meeting discussed business results achieved by the factories belonging to the Serbian Defence Industry Group since the previous session and summarized the results of years-long efforts to enhance production and technological capabilities with the aim of providing the Serbian Armed Forces with domestically produced state-of-the-art weapons.
In addition to the ongoing operations results, projects that are to be carried out as part of the new investment cycle worth 100 million euros financed by the Republic of Serbia were also presented, as well as the degree of fulfilment of the provisions of directives from the President of the Republic of Serbia.
It was concluded that this year, the factories have achieved record-breaking results in terms of making new contracts, contract completion and collection of payments. It is expected that this trend will continue in the coming period, since most of the production capacities will be employed over the next two years.The new investment cycle worth 100 million euros is a continuation of a process in which the state has already invested funds from the budget of the Republic of Serbia amounting to 49.5 million euros, and the factories themselves and PE Yugoimport SDPR have invested their own funds amounting to 375.5 million euros. This means that the total investment in the revitalization of defence technologies over the past decade, exceeds 525 million euros. The new investment cycle is expected to increase the production capacity of the factories by about 60 percent, mainly those that manufacture products necessary for the defence of the Republic of Serbia.
In order to implement the adopted plans for equipping the Serbian Armed Forces until 2026 and the related presidential directives issued in 2022, the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Defence Industry Group have intensified the development, production and closing contracts for the delivery of modern weapons and military equipment. Thanks to the implementation of these measures, numerous new weapons systems have been introduced into the armament of the Serbian Armed Forces (43 prototypes and zero series this year alone, and another 10 are expected until the end of the year), and they have been equipped with several hundred pieces of complex combat systems and several thousand pieces of small arms, optronic devices, large quantities of modern ammunition and other equipment previously developed by the Military Technical Institute and the defence industry factories.The meeting participants agreed that the adopted strategic commitments were being successfully met and that with the continuous influx of budget funds and with the additional efforts of the Group's member factories, the set goals for equipping the Serbian Armed Forces by 2026 would be achieved.
