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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Attracting investments, support to SMEs in focus of government

Belgrade, 28 March 2019

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said today that in the coming period the government will focus on bringing investments to the Raska region and that at the same time support should be given to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship.

Answering questions of MPs in the Serbian parliament, Brnabic pointed out that the situation with attracting investments is better today and that in the last four yeas unemployment has been more than halved.

We need to do more for the Raska region, she repeated, and explained that she has continued to pursue a policy initiated by the then prime minister, now the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, and that the focus had to be shifted from one city to another.

She said that at the first moment, the focus had to be on Nis in order to turn it into a regional centre again, and then attention was directed towards Kraljevo, Loznica and other cities.

We had to solve strategic problems, such as Zelezara Smederevo steelworks, which took over primacy as the largest exporter in Serbia in just two years, the Prime Minister explained, adding that a solution needed to be found for RTB Bor too, which was done in the last quarter of 2018.

In addition to factory NP Produkt, which has 120 employees, promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises was held in Novi Pazar twenty days ago, attended by 200 businessmen from local self-governments , where a number of concrete steps were agreed, Brnabic said.

She underlined that, along with attracting foreign investments, the government also works on support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and stressed that in the last five months a thousand jobs was created from entrepreneurship alone.

The Prime Minister said that she expects that the budget of the Science Fund will be ten times higher than this year and that it will increase from RSD 500 million to RSD 5 billion.

She recalled that the Science Fund started operating in January 2019 and that RSD 500 million was set aside from the budget for its financing. She added that the Science Fund will publish the first public invitation in June this year.

We are already negotiating with the World Bank and the EU on additional financial support from the Science Fund. I hope that next year we will increase its budget 10 times, which will be a strong signal for young people to study science, to stay at universities and return to Serbia.

Brnabic underlined that she is particularly proud of the fact that Serbia is the 23rd full member of CERN, which is very important for young researchers and scientists.

The Prime Minister reiterated that education is a priority of the Serbian government and that she is satisfied with what has been achieved, but that she has even more ambitious plans.