According to Serbian Economist, Serbia has introduced a special procedure that determines which EXPO 2027 Belgrade participants will be eligible for VAT (PDV) and excise duty exemptions, as well as the conditions and procedure for obtaining such benefits.
According to the explanations, the right to benefits is granted, in particular, to the offices of section commissioners of countries and international organizations participating in the exhibition for the purchase of goods and services related to the construction, installation, operation, and dismantling of national pavilions, as well as for administrative needs. A separate category is authorized personnel of national sections, and in some cases their family members, on a principle comparable to the privileges enjoyed by diplomatic personnel.
The privileges apply to operations directly related to EXPO, including the temporary importation of exhibition equipment and materials, as well as certain supplies within the exhibition infrastructure, such as power supply and operating resources. For official personnel, there are conditions under which VAT exemptions may also apply to personal goods, including furniture and one car per person, and excise duty exemptions may apply to fuel and lubricants for transport serving the commissioners’ offices, within established limits.
Exemptions are not automatic – participants must obtain confirmation from the EXPO organizer. This document, known as the EXPO 2027 certificate, is issued upon request and must be presented before the goods are imported or before the goods and services are delivered within the country; the certificate is issued in triplicate, and without it, the exemption does not apply.
At the end of January 2026, the Expo 2027 organizing committee reported that more than 130 countries had already officially confirmed their participation in the exhibition. Among the largest economies listed as confirmed participants are China, the United States, India, Germany, and many others. Ukraine has not yet confirmed its participation in EXPO-2027 in Belgrade.
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According to the Serbian Economist, Serbia’s preparations for the international specialized exhibition EXPO 2027 in Belgrade are accompanied by discussions about the scale of investments and their comparability with the effect of similar events in the world. The exhibition is scheduled to open on May 15, 2027 and close on August 15, 2027.
Serbian authorities earlier presented the “Leap into the Future – Serbia 2027” program, including 323 projects across the country, the total amount of which was estimated at €17.8 billion, with Finance Minister Sinisa Mali emphasizing that the direct costs of the exhibition itself will amount to about €1.2 billion, while the remaining amounts relate to broader infrastructure and development initiatives.
Separately, the EXPO 2027 orgs point out that the “EXPO project cost” in their interpretation is estimated at around €1.29 billion and includes the exhibition site and a number of related facilities and communications (including transport and engineering components), rather than the national investment program as a whole.
In parallel, the project is already reflected in the budget architecture. In the budget for 2026 adopted by Serbia, the Serbian Economist allocates the largest single item of capex for EXPO 2027 – 47.5 billion dinars.
Comparison with the experience of other exhibitions usually shows that direct revenues rarely offset the total bill, and the key is the “legacy” – infrastructure, tourist flows, business connections and reuse of facilities. For example, World Expo 2010 in Shanghai attracted about 73 million visitors and Expo 2015 in Milan about 21.5 million, while Expo 2020 Dubai reported 24.1 million visits. For Belgrade, as a specialized exhibition, the expected scale is lower: the official resource of EXPO 2027 states expectations of “more than 4 million” visitors.
In the Serbian case, the key question is how effectively the costs will be “landed” in the long-term economy: the utilization of the new exhibition infrastructure after August 2027, the impact on tourism and urban development, as well as the ability to contain budget risks and avoid underutilization of facilities.
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Vkursi Zemli start-up for checking land plots, FlyAGData. Hardware application for optimizing agricultural expenses and Fruittorg service for selling vegetables and fruit became winners of a hackathon (competition for the selection of the best software), they will represent Ukraine at the EXPO 2022 exhibition in Dubai (UAE) on February 13-17, 2022.
The event, organized by the Ukrainian Startup Fund together with ISE Corporate Accelerator and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, took place last week in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Startup Fund’s press service reported on Monday evening.
The hackathon was joined by the agricultural holdings Kernel, Agrain, IMC, Continental Farmers Group, HD-group, GFS, as well as Trend and Hedge Club, USAID and the Ukrainian-Swiss Business Association, according to the results of which three startups were selected from 25 teams.
Vkursi Zemli is a land analytics service that allows you to receive information about land plots from state registers, conduct an audit of a land bank and check land plots when buying or lending.
According to the project’s website, it uses information from more than 20 state registers and information sources, including the public cadastral map of Ukraine, the State Register of Rights to Real Estate, the Register of Encumbrances over Movable Property, the Register of Court Decisions, tax registers, etc.
The Ukrainian Startup Fund clarified that FlyAGData.Hardware is an agro-startup that allows you to optimize the costs of agricultural production and the profitability of farms by collecting agronomic and engineering data from equipment in real time.
“The peculiarities of the technology are the ability to connect to equipment by different means and protocols; API integration with various popular systems for farm management software (FMS); in the event of a signal loss, the farmer does not lose the data, but will receive them as soon as the signal is restored,” the Fund said.
According to it, Fruittorg is an agrarian highly specialized marketplace for the sale of fruit and vegetables, which, through artificial intelligence algorithms, provides demand, forms planning, and ensures the safety of product quality in the fruit and vegetable sector.
The startup identifies optimized routes to minimize shipping costs and, for example, to reduce environmental impact.
The Ukrainian Startup Fund is a state fund founded at the initiative of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for the development of technology startups in the early stages in order to increase their global competitiveness. The process of selecting startups for a grant is carried out on a competitive basis: companies are evaluated and selected by a board of independent investment experts.
Ukraine will participate in the world exhibition Expo-2020 in Dubai and will be represented at a high level, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with the Emirates News Agency WAM.
“We simply cannot miss such an important world event as Expo 2020. I would like to thank the UAE leadership for the fact that, despite all the difficulties associated with COVID-19, the construction of the Ukrainian pavilion was completed in December last year, and internal work is underway there. At the World Expo in Dubai, our country will be represented at the highest level,” Zelensky said in an interview with the Emirates News Agency WAM, published on the website of the President’s Office of Ukraine on Saturday.
Zelensky noted that the architectural image of the pavilion of Ukraine embodies the idea of an ear of wheat, which will be 15 meters high.
“Wheat is an important symbol for Ukrainians, and the yellow color on our flag symbolizes the wheat field and readiness to contribute to world food security,” the president of Ukraine stressed.
