BELGRADE (Serbia), December 17 (SeeNews) – The World Bank said it has approved the extension of a $48 million (43 million euro) loan to Serbia, to be used to support economic development based on knowledge and innovation.
The financing will support improvements to the relevance and excellence of scientific research, with potential to be commercialised on the market and provide access to finance for enterprise growth in Serbia, the World Bank said in a statement last week.
In addition, the project will support the newly created Science Fund and introduce a special programme promoting collaboration between local researchers and entrepreneurs with those in the Serbian diaspora.
"Only around 0.9% of GDP is invested in research and development (R&D), well below the EU average of 2.03%, with most of the funding coming from the government. This indicates that the private sector is severely underinvesting in R&D and innovation, suggesting market failures and a need for public financing and other structural incentives to accelerate bringing innovation to markets," Stephen Ndegwa, World Bank Country Manager for Serbia, said in the statement.
Apart from supporting the institutional development and governance of the Science Fund, the project will finance selected competitive programmes, such as basic science grants, applied research grants with incentives for promoting public-private linkages in the R&D community, and incentives for enhancing collaboration with EU partners.
The loan will also support the acceleration of enterprise programme of Serbia’s Innovation Fund through co-investment grants. The acceleration programme is designed to improve mentoring, access to investors, and entry to new markets for innovative firms. The programme will be organised in two streams: one for the early (idea) stage; and the other for growth (scale-up) stage companies. Each stream will serve up to 20 companies.
($ = 0.896245 euro)