The Agency for Commercial Registers (APR), which, among other things, maintains the Register of Pledges, as a central electronic database on pledges on movable property and rights and contracts for the sale of movable property with retention of ownership rights, has published data on registered pledges on movable property, things and rights, for the year 2024. The Register in question was established by the Law on Pledges on Movable Property and Rights Entered in the Register (“Official Gazette of RS”, no. 57/2003, 61/2005, 64/2006 – corrected, 99/2011 – other laws and 31 /2019, “Law“) which regulates the pledge on movable property and rights for the purpose of securing the creditor’s claim and which prescribes that the creditor acquires pledge by entering it in the Register of Pledges, unless otherwise determined by the Law.
According to published data, in the period January-March 2024, 1,715 pledges on movable property and rights were registered, securing claims worth over EUR 3.6 billion. For the sake of comparison, in 2022 a total of 9,330 pledges were registered to secure claims worth almost EUR 16 billion, while in 2023 there was a decrease in the number of registered pledges compared to previous years, so 8,083 pledges were registered but the value of secured claims amounted to over EUR 21 billion.
In the last three years, there has been a constant growth of registered pledges in which the subject of the pledge is the right of claims, shares, and other property rights, so that their participation in the structure of the subject of the pledge in 2023 amounts to 30.06%.
Although the Law prescribes the possibility of out-of-court and judicial sale of subjects of pledge in order to settle the secured claim, foreclosures on the property on which the pledges has been established are, according to the available data, relatively rare in practice.