The Serbian Business Registers Agency (SBRA) and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia (CCIS) have signed three documents that will enable businessmen in Serbia and the Western Balkans region easier access to the registered business, financial and other information.
The SBRA Director, Milan Lučić, has stressed that the Agency supports starting a business and facilitates the performance of business activities of more than 400,000 registered business entities and around 50,000 legal entities, providing them annually with an average of about 1,000,000 administrative services, a substantial part of which are those offered electronically. In addition to publishing data over the Internet, the SBRA also provides it to state bodies, through web services, and participates in the most important e-government projects in Serbia.
The CCIS President, Marko Čadež, has emphasized that SBRA’s data, as well as other databases utilized by the Chamber, are important for the economy, given that the CCIS uses them to perform analyses based on which it can offer answers to the questions businessmen are interested in, such as where to export, what industry to invest in, who are the best suppliers, who are the suitable business partners, etc., providing them with a ‘blood test’ of the industry in which they operate. When it comes to foreign trade, businessmen can discover the additional potential of their services or products, as well as export markets, which is the biggest advantage of the integrated statistics applied by the CCIS.
Čadež has stressed: “We have been cooperating with the SBRA for a long time. With these agreements, we are entering a new phase of cooperation, on the basis of which we will be offering a new set of services that are not provided by any institution or chamber of commerce in most of Europe”.
The Director of the SBRA, Milan Lučić, has pointed out: “Further development of the cooperation with the CCIS will enable a more intensive exchange of data and improvement of the entire economic environment”, adding that the strategic SBRA-CCIS cooperation will, on the one hand, facilitate the SBRA to get important feedback inputs from the economy, enabling it, on the other hand, to be provided with the necessary expertise and knowledge.
The SBRA Director has emphasized that the SBRA continues working on further digitalization of its services, such as e-applications for registration of pledge and financial leasing agreements, which will be enabled by the end of the year, announcing that a new SBRA register, the Register of Healthcare Institutions, will start operating as of October.
Milan Lučić, in his capacity as the President of the Management Board of the SEE Regional Business Registries Portal (BIFIDEX), and Marko Čadež, in his capacity as the President of the Managing Board of the Western Balkans 6 Chamber Investment Forum (WB6 CIF), have also signed a BIFIDEX-WB6 CIF Memorandum of Understanding, which provides a framework for establishing more fruitful cooperation in the implementation of the two international projects supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which significantly contribute to the development of the single market of the Western Balkans.
The EBRD Regional Director, Western Balkans, Zsuzsanna Hargitai, has said she hopes that such cooperation will contribute to the economic recovery after COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to the continuation of the regional integration.
She has said: “We describe the economic recovery in two words - green and digital, and here we are, in a digital space. We are cooperating by taking concrete steps, enabling the economy to use this data and improve trade in the Western Balkans region.”
As Hargitai has emphasized, it is necessary that awareness of the availability of this data is additionally raised, enabling businessmen operating in the six economies in the region to exploit and use it more effectively, announcing further EBRD assistance in this respect.
The statements of the SBRA Director, Milan Lučić, the CCIS President, Marko Čadež, and the EBRD Regional Director, Western Balkans, Zsuzsanna Hargitai, are available on the SBRA YouTube Channel.