Vojvodina most attractive location for foreign investment in Serbia

The fairs of Investment and Real Estate and Power Supply with Environment Protection have been declared open by the President of the Vojvodina Government, Mr Bojan Pajtić, PhD, and a welcome speech has also been given by the Vice-prime minister in the Serbian Government and the Minister of Economy and regional Development, Mr Mlađan Dinkić, MSc Mr Mlađan Dinkić said that it rested on the local self-governments how fast they would develop and how much foreign investment they would attract.

- In Vojvodina Novi Sad, Subotica, Vršac, Zrenjanin, Sremska Mitrovica, Inđija and Pećinci represent the leaders in attracting investments, however, this list end just about there.

According to Mr Dinkić, there are a lot of cities and municipalities that could and must do more in order to attract foreign investors. They should work more on interconnecting themselves through infrastructure, which they will get help for from the governments of Serbia and Vojvodina.

- It is very important that, while we are still living through the aftermaths of the economic crisis, we do everything possible to attract as much investment as we can to Serbia and Vojvodina. Without new investments, it is impossible to improve the foreign trade balance of Serbia, and consequently create macroeconomic stability, says Mr Dinkić.

The Minister of Economy has also confirmed that the inflation in Serbia is higher that it was planned and that the national currency is under pressure because Serbia imports much more than it exports, and that the only way to increase export is to attract new investors that would build new factories, employ more people and export a major share of the commodities.

The President of the Vojvodina Government, Mr Bojan Pajtić said that "Investexpo" has been a crying need for local self-governments to be able to present their investment potentials because this Fair has grown by 20 percent since last year.

He reiterated the fact that in the last ten years about 5.7 billion Euros of foreign investment had come to Vojvodina and that about 68,000 peple had been employed thanks to these investments.

- Foreign investor have to be adduced about the investment potentials as such that the profit made her, because of the taxation policy, financial stability, labour force and its quality, is much higher than that in the neighbouring countries, says Mr Pajtić.

The President of the Provincial Government also said that the cities and municipalities in Vojvodina participate in a wide range of projects from the pre-accession IPA funds of the European Union, but that the problem lay in the fact that they had not had funds to participate in them. With this in mind he announced that, through the Development Fund of Vojvodina, the Province would provide funds for a special credit line that cities and municipalities would be able to utilise for such purposes.

News source: EMG.rs link: article