Logistics costs in Serbia account for twice as much in the product price as compared to the developed countries of the West, which leaves a lot of room for optimization, the conclusion of the Logistics Economics Panel, held at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Belgrade.
Logistics is the industry “heavy” $2,300 billion, and it is expected that current world trends will soon reach Serbia – digitization, robotization and automation of the whole process. Close proximity is also the transfer of goods to dron. This type of delivery of goods will especially be experienced in the pharmaceutical industry, so we can expect that in the next 20 years most of the drugs (medicine) will be delivered through drones, at very short time intervals.
Experts from the Faculty of Economics and the largest logistics companies that participated in the panel estimate that sustainability will take the primacy of the price in the logistics industry, and that the environmental side of the work will be crucial for survival. The self-propelled trucks for electric or hybrid drives will replace the current fleet of classic trucks.
“Legislation will further contribute to the importance of climate change and the increase in environmental awareness to be a more important side of business in this branch of the economy. Logistics will only survive those who will reduce emissions of harmful gases to a minimum of 20% by the year 2050, ideally at 0%” said Darko Babić from DHL.
Another of the emerging trends is the blockchain system, which will allow processes that take 7 days in the traditional logos to start and end at one point, with one click. “All this reduces costs, accelerates processes, encourages development,” explained Rade Stojisavljević from Milsped.
In recent years, Serbia has been following the trend of outsourcing logistics, which leaves the company the ability to focus only on the product and production process. Poor infrastructure stagnates the logistics performance of Serbia, increases the price of products, since such costs cost twice as much as in the countries of the West. The advantage of the domestic economy is a good geographical position and this potential should be used, the conclusion of this expert panel at the Faculty of Economics.