Serbia's victory in the 2010 Davis Cup proved, say Serbs, that it has the best tennis players in the world. It claims to be the world's largest raspberry exporter. But the latest boast may come as more of a surprise: that the country's once-renowned arms industry is making a comeback, the latest issue of the British paper The Economist reads.

North Africa is a main target, and the new year may offer some big prizes, the paper reports. Serbian Minister Dragan Sutanovac says that Serbia is close to signing a USD 500 million agreement to build a military hospital in at least one Arab country.

He also hopes to win a USD 400 million contract to modernise 149 M-84 tanks that Yugoslavia exported to Kuwait in 1991.

If Serbia wins the Kuwait contract, says Sutanovac, some of the work will probably be shared between Bosnian, Croatian and Slovene companies.

Before it fell apart in the wars of the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was a big arms exporter, the paper reiterates, adding that NATO damaged many of Serbia's weapon factories in 1999 during the Kosovo war.

But the industry has started to recover. In 2008 Serbian military exports were worth USD 200 million. Last year they brought in twice that sum (not including a USD 400 million contract, signed in November, to build three arms factories in Algeria).

The industry is also growing in sophistication, The Economist stresses.

Sutanovac says that NATO has given the Serbian arms industry the go-ahead to export to its armies.

Much modernising remains to be done before that can begin in earnest. Still, says Sutanovac, defence sales are the country's fastest-growing industry after agriculture.