Vršac is 84 km away from Belgrade towards the north-east. It is located on the edges of the Pannonian plain at the foothill of the Vršac Mountains, only 14 km far from the Romanian border.

The town lies on the international road Belgrade-Timisoara. The road border crossing Vatin is only a ten-minute drive from the town. The international railway Vienna-Budapest-Belgrade-Bucharest passes through Vršac. There is an airport within the Flight Academy in Vršac, currently used by small airplanes, air-taxi and middle-size aircrafts. The runway is 1000 m long and 25 m wide.

Vršac has about 55 000 inhabitants and represents a multiethnic community where members of 16 nationalities live. The prevailing minorities are Romanians (10 %) and Hungarians ( 4.8 %).

Powerful pharmaceutical industry, food-confectionery industry and wine and beer manufacturing industries are a back-bone of the town economy. The mainstays of Vršac economy are: Hemofarm Group, ''Swisslion'', the chocolate factory ''Banat'' AD, ''Vršacki vinogradi'' AD, ''Vršacka pivara''AD, AD Imlek Vršac, DKP (Utility Services) ''Drugi oktobar'' Vršac.

As far as the level of economic development is concerned, the Vršac municipality is in the tenth place in Serbia, as per the amount of the national income.


POPULATION

54 396 inhabitants live in the territory of the Vršac municipality. The largest number of them are Serbs
- 39 418 ( 72.5 %), then Romanians- 5913 (10.8 %) and Hungarians - 2619 (4.8%).

Trends of the total number of inhabitants in the Vršac municipality in the period from 1948-1961 were positive, but at very low average growth rate of 0.09 %, and since 1981/02 there is a permanent decrease of population at the average growth rate of -0.55%.


EMPLOYMENT

Total number of the employed: 11.195
No. of the employed per 1000 inhabitants: 201
Total number of the unemployed: 7.373
No. of the unemployed per 1000 inhabitants: 136
Economically active population: 35.094
Share of economically active in the total population: 64%
Employment rate vs economically active population: 32%
Unemployment rate vs economically active population: 21%

According to the data of the National Employment Office – local office Vršac, there were totally 6466
unemployed persons in the period from 01/01/2004 to 31/12/2004, which is less than the figures from
2002 when there were 7373 unemployed persons in Vršac.

However, the number of persons that were made redundant in 2004 was 543, while the number for
2003 was 368.


EDUCATION

There are five elementary schools in Vršac at the moment, the high school ''Borislav Petrov-Braca'',
chemical-textile secondary school ''Braca Acketa'', technical secondary school ''Nikola Tesla'',
agricultural secondary school Vršac, two-year teacher college and the Teacher Training Faculty where
training is conducted in the Serbian and Romanian languages. Tutoring is carried out in some schools
in the Serbian language and there are classes that are taught in the Romanian and Hungarian
language. The Flight Academy JAT represents a specific institution where domestic and foreign pilots
are instructed.