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Serbia wins best greenfield investment award for third year in a row

Belgrade, 30 June 2006

Director of the Serbian Investment Promotion Agency (SIEPA) Jasna Matic said today that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) awarded the best international investor award to Airport City Belgrade (ACB), which makes a Serbian company the best greenfield investors in Southeast Europe for the third consecutive year.

Gil Deckel, Jasna Matic, Draginja Djuric and Veselin Jevrosimovic

In the fifth annual ministerial investment conference in Vienna, OECD also awarded prizes to Banca Intesa for the best investment in Serbia and ComTrade Group in the most innovative domestic investor category, according to Matic.

She said that these awards are recognition of Serbia’s investment potential and recalled that the Serbian government adopted in a session yesterday a Decree on terms and ways of stimulating direct investments, which will increase Serbia’s competitiveness.

ACB Executive Director Gil Deckel explained that ACB is a joint investment by Africa Israel Group and Tidhar Group Ltd. from Israel and that it is a €120 million business park.

He noted that the business park will span 12 hectares, with 126,000 square metres of best business space, only ten minutes from Belgrade airport, where numerous local construction firms will be engaged with over 200 workers working daily.

According to him, when it is completed, the state-of-the-art business park in this part of Europe will offer businesses facilities as well as the comfort of top world class standards.

Deckel expressed assurance that Belgrade will become a regional centre and that Serbia will become business leader in the region.

General Director of Banca Intesa Beograd Draginja Djuric said that the acquisition by Banca Intesa worth over €450 million is the largest financial investment in the Serbian banking sector, but also generally the biggest foreign investment in Serbia last year.

Banca Intesa employs 2,246 workers in Serbia, 409 of whom got employment last year, Djuric said and announced that the bank plans to employ another 450 workers this year.

According to Djuric, the bank recorded high lending and deposit activity in 2005 as a result of a constant increase in the number of its clients. Banca Intesa currently has over 800,000 legal and physical persons as clients, she added.

The award granted to ComTrade Group is particularly important, SIEPA said in the statement noting that this leading IT company in the region got recognition for software it developed for the needs of the Serbian Corporate Register Agency.

The International Investor of the Year is an event that offers a unique opportunity to present the most successful examples of international investment in Southeastern Europe, which contributes to a positive business image of the whole region In the past three years Serbia has held a leading position in that regard.

Djuric pointed out that a major financial magazine, The Banker, awarded Banca Intesa Beograd with the Bank of the Year in Serbia-Montenegro 2004 award.

President of the ComTrade Group Veselin Jevrosimovic explained that the most innovative domestic investor award was also presented to his company because of its electronic system, generated to meet the needs of the Corporate Register Agency and facilitate, modernise and speed up the process of registering new businesses in Serbia.

Company Spinnaker New Technologies, member of the ComTrade Group, in cooperation with the Corporate Register Agency has created a web portal called ''portal4partners'' that will be presented not only in the domestic but also in the EU market, thanks to the high level of European standards it has achieved, said Jevrosimovic.

He recalled that the cost of registering a business used to stand at $202, whereas after the introduction of the new system it has been reduced to €50.