The second meeting of the Working Group for Business Friendliness was organised on Wednesday, 1 March in Belgrade, in cooperation with the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and GIZ's Open Regional Fund for Modernisation of Municipal Services (GIZ ORF).
The Working Group provides support for implementation of the SEE 2020 Strategy in the field of improving the business environment, and it involves the representatives of ministries, members of the BFC SEE Regional Council, businesses and local governments from the region – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia.
The agenda of the second meeting of the WGBF focused on maintaining and improving business-friendly environment standards, particularly in terms of strengthening the BFC SEE regional platform, exchanging experiences and developing joint initiatives which would contribute to the improvement of business climate in the region of South-East Europe. The introductory part of the meeting presented the analysis of local capacities in 45 cities and municipalities in Vojvodina, with particular focus on the organisation, resources and capacities of Local Economic Development Offices, as well as the impact and increased level of investments in LGs certified by the BFC standard, compared to municipalities not holding this prestigious recognition. In the second part of the meeting, GIZ ORF presented the new project concept for supporting the BFC SEE network, primarily the certified municipalities in the region. The meeting also presented best practice examples in the region in terms of use of vouchers for seasonal workers, the positive experiences from Croatia, and local government competitiveness index in Montenegro.
At the very end, NALED, as the BFC SEE Regional Technical Secretariat and the Secretariat of Working Group for Business Friendliness, presented the idea for a new regional initiative – a platform for exchanging best practice examples in the SEE region, as well as the new BFC SEE online platform developed within the project Boost Business Friendliness, supported by RCC and GIZ ORF.
The following meeting of the Working Group for Business Friendliness is planned for the last quarter of 2017, which will present the realisation of the key conclusions and recommendations agreed at today’s meeting.