The Impact of COVID 19 Crisis on Medium sized Enterprisesin Serbia
The research objective is to empirically assess the impact of the COVID 19 crisis on the operation of medium sized enterprises in Serbia. The main research question is how the COVID 19 crisis has affected the operation of medium sized enterprises in Serbia with focus on major problems faced by these enterprises in times of the state of emergency over the epidemic. Also, considerable research attention is on policy measures to alleviate the negative impact of the COVID 19 outbreak with comparison of measures between Serbia and selected countries. To empirically assess the impact of the COVID 19 crisis on medium sized enterprises in Serbia, an online survey research was conducted during the period of March and April 2020. The survey results show that the COVID 19 crisis has affected the daily business of medium sized enterprises in different ways and with varying intensity. Due to the COVID 19 outbreak, 20% of the surveyed enterprises have moved their employees to work from home, while a decline in liquidity and in business capacity utilization, as well as supply chain disruptions have occurred in 16% of enterprises each. Less than 10% of enterprises expressed other problems such as payment of wages, insufficient workforce utilization, reduction in business hours, production disruptions, limited access to resources etc.