AUSTRIA 2021
INTERVIEW
NADA KNEŽEVIĆ, DIRECTOR OF THE AUSTRIAN REPRESENTATIVE OFFICE OF THE SERBIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRY
POWER RESIDES IN CONTACTS,
TRUST AND DEVOTED WORK Firmly established links between businesspeople, but also support provided to them selflessly by chambers of commerce and consulates, ensured that not a single job agreed with Serbian business leaders suffered even during the most difficult stages of the pandemic. This is illustrated clearly by the results of the trade exchange and potential investments reached again, if not slightly exceeded,” says Nada Knežević, director of the SCCI Austrian Representative Office. Cooperation between institutions, particularly chambers of commerce, was much more intensive throughout the entire period of the crisis than it ordinarily is under regular conditions, and all stakeholders engaged maximally in helping the economy, through exchanges of information and experiences, to grab a connection under extraordinary circumstances, explains our interlocutor. “I consider it a special success that every Serbian company that needed to send its workers to Austria during the period of the crisis in order to assemble their products and systems, as stipulated by their business contracts, was actually able to do that, despite numerous challenges.”
A
lthough cooperation between Serbian and Austrian companies during the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted in a way that was far from regular, the level of business cooperation was preserved thanks to the maximum engagement of companies. As such, the fall in the 16
trade exchange during 2020 was far less in the case of Serbia than it was with Austria’s other partners, as shown by data from the Serbian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCI). “The trade exchange recovered quickly during 2021, and the pre-crisis period value of this exchange is expected to be
To what extent was it possible, under these conditions, to organise in-person visits and direct contacts between businesspeople from the two countries? The organising of these kinds of meetings wasn’t at all easy because, during certain periods, permission for movements was granted exclusively for pressing, urgent business matters. Receiving the consent of border authorities to enter the territory of the state, consent to move within the territory during permitted times or periods when movement was prohibited, was mainly achieved by the SCCI Representative Office engaging with the services of the Austrian Interior Ministry and other relevant provincial authorities. Every company that addressed the SCCI
