The Minister of Industry, Entrepreneurship and Trade, Mrs. Rozeta Hajdari, participated in the discussion organized by the European Investors Council, on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the entry into force of the Stabilization Association Agreement (SAA).
Evaluating the Stabilization and Association Agreement as one of the most important steps for Kosovo on the way towards the European integration, Minister Hajdari said that Kosovo has taken a series of actions of obligations and institutional reforms, especially on the economic aspect, emphasizing that basically this is exactly the purpose of the agreement.
Minister Hajdari said that during 2022, the trade exchanges value with the European Union countries has increased, pointing out that 41% of the general trade exchanges were realized with the EU countries, reaching a value of 2.7 billion Euros, while the export reaching the value of over 311 million Euros or 33.8% of the total exports of goods with an increase of 31% compared to the previous year.
Since the entry into force of the SAA, on average, the percentage of exports to the EU countries during the first three years has increased up to 20% every year, while from the fourth year until now we have an average annual increase of about 40%.
Furthermore, Minister Hajdari has also mentioned the positive increasing trend of the Foreign Direct Investments from the EU countries, emphasizing that only in 2022, the FDIs reached the value of 342.6 million Euros, an increase of 44.36% from the previous year. Since the entry into force of the SAA, the foreign investments stock from the European Union countries is 911.4 million Euros.
Out of these investments, Germany with 65.6% or 597.8 million Euros makes up the vast majority of total investments, followed by Austria with 178.6 million Euros or 16.3%, and Hungary with 60 million Euros or 6.6% of the total investments.
