December 6 (SeeNews) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans to reveal a new country strategy for Serbia which will be available for public consultation as of next week, a senior EBRD official has said.
The green economy will be taking a larger and larger role in Serbia, the EBRD country director for the country, Daniel Berg, said during the launch event of the Green Innovation Vouchers Scheme in Serbia, according to a video file posted on the website of Serbian news agency Tanjug on Tuesday.
The Green Innovation Vouchers Scheme (IVS) aims at boosting the innovation capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the field of resource efficiency, thus supporting the country’s long-term economic competitiveness and climate resilience, the EBRD said in a statement.
The IVS will build new relationships between SMEs and local research and development (R&D) service providers, which will stimulate direct knowledge transfer and catalyse the transformation of innovative project ideas into a market for resource-efficient products and services. The scheme is supported by Austria’s DRIVE (Delivering Resource Efficiency InVEstments) Programme Account.
In 2017, a total of 50% of the financing that EBRD extended in Serbia was related to the green economy, Berg said in the video file.
Berg said in May the EBRD intends to increase its investment in Serbia up to some 500 million euro ($591.1 million) annually from 300 million euro currently.
($ = 0.845815 euro)