Italy is Serbia's "first class economic partner", the experts of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce (PKS) have said in a statement for Tanjug, ahead of the Serbia-Italy summit which will be held in Rome in three days.

During the summit of the two governments, headed by Serbian President Boris Tadic and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, various programmes for the improvement of economic relations between the two countries will be discussed.

Prior to his visit to Italy, Tadic said that the forthcoming summit of the Serbian and Italian governments is an opportunity to discuss a strategic cooperation in the area of communications, machine industry and energy.

PKS stresses that Italy has been a very important country when it comes to export of Serbia's products, therefore the expansion of economic relations with this EU member state has a great significance for Serbia.

In the past two decades, Italy has been among the first countries regarding the export of Serbia's goods. Export to the Italian market amounted to 27.6% of Serbia's export to the EU, that is 14.7% of the country's total export.

According to the PKS data, the indicators of Serbia's trade balance show that Italy is a step ahead of all other EU member states regarding the trade with Serbia.

Apart from that, the PKS expert analysis showed that the trade between Serbia and Italy has doubled in the past three years, whereas since 2004 it has increased by about five times.