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Characteristics of Roma entrepreneurship in Serbia

2016; Volume: 64; Issue: 7-8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5937/ekopre1608414z

2406-1239

Jasna Zarkovic, Dragiša Mijačić, Blagoje Paunović,

Regional Development and Management Studies

This paper presents key findings of the research on Roma entrepreneurship in the context of the overall entrepreneurial population in Serbia, and general characteristics of ethnic minority entrepreneurship in the world. The paper's objective is to show the importance of the development of Roma entrepreneurship for the solutions to economic and social problems of this ethnic group. The survey of 45 registered Roma entrepreneurs on the territory of the Republic of Serbia revealed that the majority are engaged in service provision, agriculture, manufacturing industry and waste recycling. The Roma are most often owners of microenterprises, which are usually family businesses. Roma entrepreneurs primarily operate on the local market, where revenues they generate are significantly lower than the revenues generated by other businesses. By gender, Roma entrepreneurs are mostly men. On average, they are insufficiently educated and trained to run a business, as suggested by the census data indicating that one out of three Roma people has primary education, and only 11.5% a secondary education. One of the most important problems faced by the Roma in business is obtaining finance. Another significant problem encountered by Roma entrepreneurs is related to high labour taxes and contributions, while other problems include insufficient knowledge about laws and procedures, grey economy, unstable prices of agricultural products, weak purchasing power of buyers, consumers' prejudice, etc. In order to develop Roma entrepreneurship, it is necessary to ensure a more significant financial assistance to the existing and potential Roma entrepreneurs from public and donor funds, to look into the possibility of introducing new mechanisms to finance entrepreneurial activities among the Roma, provide different types of non-financial support to Roma entrepreneurs, support associations and promote entrepreneurship.