The 2010 real economic growth rate will amount to around 1.5 percent and will be lower than the planned 1.8 to 2 percent, while the inflation rate will be 10 or 11 percent, President of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce (PKS) Milos Bugarin stated at a session of the PKS Managing Board on Friday.

Bugarin underlined that after an encouraging economic growth in the first half of 2010, the third quarter of the year experienced a drop.

The growth was recorded in 65 percent of the economic branches, while 35 percent recorded a decrease. The greatest drop in economic growth was recorded in the civil engineering sector, where the incentives were pretty much delayed.

Bugarin added that the industrial output makes up 17.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is up by 2.9 percent compared to 2009.

The PKS president underlined that the Serbian economy is characterized by high illiquidity and indebtedness of companies, adding that therefore the availability of loans in the next year will be much less while the banks will increase interest rates given the higher reference interest rate.