Fifteen years ago, the Serbian Business Registers Agency established the Register of Pledges on Movable Property and Rights, which started operating on 15 August 2005. No such register had ever existed in the country.
Currently, 181,912 active pledge rights are registered in this single, central, electronic database. The total value of the secured claims amounts to EUR 84,785,202,507.00.
The availableness of the Pledge Register, which contains an increasing number of constituted pledges, is economically beneficial for all participants in the market of the Republic of Serbia. Its psychological effect is also undoubted, given that the pledge creditors feel safer since their claims are secured, while the debtors, i.e. the pledgers, feel greater responsibility towards the obligations they assume under the pledge agreements.
Since the beginning of the year, 6,405 pledge rights have been registered, securing the claims in the amount of EUR 6,961,492,938.00.
Contractual pledges deriving from pledge agreements concluded in accordance with the law account for 97% of all registered pledge rights. Judicial pledges, originating from enforcement proceedings regulated by the law governing enforcement and security proceedings, make up 2% of the registered pledge rights, while statutory pledges that originate from the tax procedure account for about 1.5% of the registered pledges.
Banks are the most represented pledge creditors (60%). They are followed by other companies (13%), the Tax Administration (2%), natural persons (1.4 %,) and sole proprietors (0.11%).
Forty-seven percent of registered pledgers are natural persons, while companies and sole proprietors account for 43% and 9% respectively.
Companies are the most represented pledgers (46%), being followed by natural persons (43%) and sole proprietors, who account for about 10% of all pledge debtors.
The pledge right is acquired by registration in the Pledge Register, while the priority in satisfying the secured claim is determined according to the time of receipt of the application for registration of the pledge right by the Serbian Business Registers Agency. All changes of data on the registered pledge rights are to be registered in the Pledge Register, as well as annotations of the initiated settlement procedures, annotations of disputes and annotations of data on other facts and documents relevant for legal transactions relating to the registered pledge. All this information is available to the public on the Agency's website.
On 31 July 2020, the electronic noticeboard of the Pledge Register was launched on the SBRA’s website, providing a single access point to all notifications on initiated settlement procedures and out-of-court sales of pledged items, which have been published since 7 May 2019.
During 2019, the regulations governing the Pledge Register were amended, establishing a unique legal framework for all collaterals and creating conditions for shifting into a fully digital mode of operation and online registration, which will be enabled as of the third quarter of 2021.
The Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Pledge of Movable Assets Registered in the Pledge Register has expanded the competence of the Pledge Register, envisaging the registration of additional two types of collateral - a pledge right with transfer of the pledged asset into possession and a contract of sale with retention of ownership until the price is paid in full. The registration of these new types of collateral with the Serbian Business Registers Agency will be enabled as of 1 January 2021.
The aforementioned activities are envisaged by the Programme for Improving the Position of the Republic of Serbia on the World Bank's Doing Business List for the Period 2020-2023 and are in accordance with the measures aimed at improving the legal and institutional framework with regard to the transparency of information on collateral.