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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia has done a lot in field of digitisation

Belgrade/Singapore, 15 November 2022

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said today at the panel "Trailblazing the Digital Frontier", held as part of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, that our country has done a lot in the field of digitisation in recent years.

Brnabic stated that Serbia introduced informatics as a compulsory subject in elementary schools and invested a lot of money in the infrastructure for start-up innovation companies, which build science and technology parks.

We have changed laws to provide access for research and development companies. We employ IT experts and bring foreigners to Serbia to work, but we also bring our people from the diaspora back to the country, said the Prime Minister and added that the results exceeded our expectations.

The Prime Minister noted that access to the Internet is the first thing we should turn to, assessing that it has become a basic human right in the 21st century.

She underlined that one of the key priorities was the introduction of electronic administration, which improved the functioning of our government, but was also a way to fight corruption with transparency.

According to Brnabic, another area in which digitisation could play an even greater and more important role is agriculture.

I think there is so much potential in new growth models in every sector. The government's job is to help the private sector achieve this and to create the conditions for it to be successful, she said.

Speaking about the dangers brought by new technology, the Prime Minister said that nowadays citizens are certainly better protected than before.

When the data was exclusively in written form, anyone could come, look, copy, use and abuse it, and in the end it would not even be known who did it.

Today, privacy is much better protected, especially because there is strict supervision, which is why people would not dare to misuse data, she assessed.

The Prime Minister underlined that great things are ahead for Serbia in the coming period, such as the use of artificial intelligence for further economic growth and the provision of better services to our citizens.

After participating in the mentioned panel, Brnabic stated that today in Singapore she had a series of good meetings with representatives of several companies and institutions in the field of information technology, as well as that everyone is interested in cooperation with Serbia.

She said that the Serbian delegation met with representatives of the largest company for the production of batteries (Sila nanotechnologies) and the world's most famous company in the field of robotics (Boston Dynamics) and artificial intelligence (AI Singapore), stressing that all the interlocutors praised our results in the field of digitisation and artificial intelligence.

The Prime Minister pointed out that it was also said at the Bloomberg Forum that Serbia is among the 10 countries that have made the most progress in the field of digitisation in the last five years and one of those that encourage the development of digitisation in every segment.

According to her, Serbia is recognised as one of the countries that has best implemented digitisation and new technologies, that is, as a country with the greatest potential.

This is great news, above all for young people, because it means that we will have more and more finances for their ideas and research, and therefore more and more jobs in the field of modern technologies, she said.

The Prime Minister stated that during 2021, every other new job opening in Serbia was in the field of information technology, adding that she expects better results in the future.

Speaking about relations with Singapore, Brnabic said that there have not been many high-level visits in the past two decades, but that that country and the whole of Asia are important to Serbia.

She recalled that our two countries were primarily brought together by technology, adding that the artificial intelligence institutes of Serbia and Singapore established cooperation first and that now better political, economic and overall relations are built on that.

The Prime Minister expressed her hope that our country will become part of the global alliance for artificial intelligence by the end of the month, noting that many countries have supported Serbia on that path, including Singapore.