NALED’s Key Guidelines Are Crucial For A Successful Partnership At its 13th annual conference on economic reform, NALED with its members and partners presented its traditional 100 recommendations in the Grey Book, whose goal is to rapidly overcome the effects of the pandemic and improve conditions for doing business and investments.
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he first panel ‘Together for Fair Competition’ was addressed by Deputy Prime Minister of the Serbian Government and Minister of Mining and Energy Zorana Mihajlović, German Ambassador H.E. Thomas Schieb, and Swedish Ambassador H.E. Jan Lundin. The conversation was moderated by Ivan Miletić, President of
NALED’s Fair Competition Alliance. Željko Tomić, President of the NALED e-Government Alliance, led the second panel entitled ‘United Towards Digital Economy’. He spoke with the Minister of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, Darija Kisić Tepavčević, the Ambassador of the United Kingdom H.E.
Sian McLeod, Head of the EU Delegation to the Republic of Serbia H.E. Sem Fabrizi, and director of the IT and e-Government Office, Mihailo Jovanović. Prime Minister of Serbia Ana Brnabić then addressed the participants. She dedicated her speech to future prospects in 2021.
ANA BRNABIĆ, PRIME MINISTER OF SERBIA
The Government and NALED have a common goal – further digitalisation
“Last year was quite difficult not only for Serbia, but for the whole world, as we faced unexpected challenges. In the midst of the pandemic, Serbia managed to do two fascinating things: it had the lowest drop in GDP in Europe, only 1%. Furthermore, it had the second highest vaccination rate in Europe, but came second to none in the number of revaccinated people. We couldn’t have imagined such results a year ago.” This was how Prime Minister Ana Brnabić began her address, adding that these successes serve as an incentive for the government to continue reform, and a reminder that this wasn’t pure luck, but a result of dedicated reforms and recent financial consolidation of the country. 12 | CorD | NALED | AGENDA 2021
She said that 2021 would also pose many challenges, and added that that the government was trying to strike a balance between the population’s health and the healthcare protection system, business activities, the economy and life. Support for people and businesses will be provided again this year: the third package of state aid is worth 250 billion dinars, and more than 6 billion euros have been allocated since the beginning of the crisis. Speaking about the importance of simplifying administrative procedures, Brnabić emphasized digitalisation and its benefits for companies and the public, which became particularly evident during the pandemic, illustrating this with the fact that state administration and local governments had exchanged 22 million pieces of information since 1 June 2017, meaning that people didn’t need to visit a counter 22 million times. “I’d like to thank NALED for their longterm support to reform, and their help to
identify crucial steps in reforms and to carry them out, so that Serbia can become a country where business will be easier and where our people will have better quality of life”, said the Prime Minister. The Serbian Government and NALED share a focus on digitalisation, and many of the measures the government adopted in 2020 were the fruit of their cooperation: introducing electronic public procurement and electronic delivery of cadastral and tax decisions for sole traders on flat rates. Otter fruits are common deliberations on removing administrative obstacles through modern digital solutions in both the state administration and in healthcare, agriculture, international business and other areas. “When I look at the 10 priority recommendations of Grey Book 13, I see the common denominator for most of it is digitalization. I can promise that we will do our very best to resolve most of it”, she concluded.
