The National Bank of Serbia (NBS) believes Serbia's GDP will grow 1.5 percent in 2012, while it will be at around 2 percent this year, NBS Governor Dejan Soskic said on Monday.

The NBS reduced earlier its projections for this year from 3 to 2.5 percent.

The changes in the prognosis for next year are largely based on the assumption that Serbia's biggest economic partners in the EU, Italy, Germany and Romania, are going to record low GDP growth because of the economic crisis, Soskic told a news conference.

He expects the International Monetary Fund to come up with similar 2012 projections for Serbia.

According to NBS estimates, the 2012 GDP growth will mostly be guided by growing investments and net export to a lesser extent, while the final expenditure will have a negative impact this year as well, the governor noted.

He quoted the national office of statistics in saying that the real GDP growth between the third quarters of 2010 and 2011 was significantly lower and stood at 0.7 percent.

Commenting on the possibility of the eurozone crisis spilling over into Serbia, Soskic stated the NBS was carefully monitoring all banking operations and that there were no disturbing activities there.

According to him, the NBS has mechanisms to respond to a potential spread of the international financial crisis into Serbia's system.