FOREIGN INVESTORS COUNCIL 2021/2022
INTERVIEW
ANA GOVEDARICA, FIC VICE PRESIDENT AND SPOKESPERSON (ROCHE SERBIA GENERAL MANAGER)
FIC Experience & Knowhow At
SERBIA’S DISPOSAL Serbia has good foundations for the digitalisation of health and could progress very quickly and provide high-quality services that meet the level of the most developed EU countries. The FIC will strive to provide strong support to this process through the sharing of the knowledge and experiences of its members.
D
espite COVID-19 having locked us in our homes, during the previous period we witnessed a lively exchange of opinions between the Government and the Foreign Investors Council, but also between the FIC and other actors, which enabled the society to adapt to the new circumstances quickly. We asked our interlocutor, FIC Vice President and Spokesperson, and Roche General Manager, Ana Govedarica, which FIC activities she would single out as having been the most important during the previous period. “COVID-19 is the cause of great challenges around the entire world, and thus also for Serbia, but it is also true that it has encouraged communities to move faster in some directions. As a result, there have been some extremely positive changes that might never have happened were it not for this pandemic, or which would have unfolded much more slowly. Confronted by this great threat, we began mutually cooperating and communicating much more: in terms of companies among themselves, even competing ones, the economy with the state and the entire community. To put it simply, we all realised that we will overcome this situation much easier if we stick together, and that’s how it has been. In spite of everything, life and the economy did not come to a complete standstill, the society spots the injuries and adapts to accelerated changes. “During the previous period, the FIC represented a bridge between companies and the Government, cooperating extremely closely with the state, while members showed a huge degree of mutual solidarity and a desire to contribute to the normalisation of the situation, often giving more consideration to social interests than their own company ones. “At the start of the pandemic, following the lockdowns of countries, it was important to maintain supply chains and flows of goods, so the FIC worked intensively, in cooperation with the state, to establish “green corridors” and very successfully, under the shortest possible timeframes, established almost unhindered movements of raw materials in all directions and routes.
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