Serbia's president has named the leader of the centre-right Serbian Progressive Party, Aleksandar Vucic, prime minister after his party scored a resounding win in snap elections last month.
"I have informed the parliament that I gave a mandate" to Vucic to form a new government, President Tomislav Nikolic told reporters on Tuesday.
Vucic, who will have to deal urgently with the country's ailing economy and shepherd its bid to join the European Union, was expected to present his future cabinet to parliament and be sworn in by the end of the week.
He indicated that he would call on his coalition partner in the outgoing government, the Socialist Party of Serbia, to join his cabinet.
Vucic's SNS party won an imposing 158 seats in the 250-member parliament in the March 16 vote, called after Serbia began EU membership talks after reaching a historic accord with the breakaway region of Kosovo last year.
The Socialists, founded by late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, won 44 seats. The centre-left Democratic Party, which held power from 2008 to 2012, won only 19.
Vucic, 44, was once an ultra-nationalist hawk but has reinvented himself as a pro-European anti-corruption campaigner.
He said the first goal of the future government would be to push ahead with economic reforms, decrease the budget deficit and restart the economy.
