USAID

Serbia’s economic situation has improved, however its legal and policy structures require additional refinements to enhance growth; its regulatory capacities need strengthening to create a transparent, competitive and vibrant private sector; and its vulnerable communities need more opportunities. USAID works with selected government counterparts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international donors, and other U.S. agencies to deepen reforms, advance legislation to attract foreign investment and support business growth, and strengthen the capacity of municipalities to stimulate local economic development.

As Serbia moves closer to European Union (EU) and World Trade Organization (WTO) accession, businesses are encountering new opportunities and competitive challenges. In order to benefit from the changes that trade liberalization will bring, Serbia’s companies need to streamline and modernize.

USAID works with promising small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors to improve productivity, upgrade the quality of their products, and to expand into new markets. USAID’s projects introduce new technologies, improve business practices, develop the workforce, enhance marketing, and help companies meet international standards. Building a strong, competitive business environment provides opportunities for long-term economic growth and employment.

Current programs that contribute to Serbia’s overall economic development include:

Business Enabling Project

The USAID Business Enabling Project (BEP) is a five-year activity designed to help the Government of Serbia improve the competitiveness of the Serbian economy and its private-sector businesses. The activity provides technical assistance and training to targeted groups to improve the business-enabling environment, support macroeconomic stability, develop financial markets, and improve business and financial management capacities within businesses and the government.

Project components are helping Serbia achieve major reforms that will:

• Streamline business regulation and economic governance by improving inspections operations and organization, streamlining construction permitting, removing or reducing para-fiscal burdens on businesses, assisting in implementation of the law on enforcement of court decisions, developing a framework for public-private partnerships, reforming labor laws, and reducing regulatory burdens on business.
  
• Improve macroeconomic policy and public financial management by improving public financial management, refining fiscal analysis and strategy formation, providing assistance to the Fiscal Council, and improving public debt management and the conditions for government financing.
  
• Deepen financial market development by increasing SME access to finance by improving the regulatory environment, implementing the new Capital Markets Law and developing other capital markets-related laws, developing improved regulatory framework for non-banking financial institutions, developing the legal framework for a commodity exchange, and improving GoS access to finance through a long-term, liquid, public-debt market.

Sustainable Local Development Project

USAID’s Sustainable Local Development Project is a five-year project that is supporting municipalities, businesses and civil society organizations move beyond municipality-by-municipality solutions in favor of cooperative, inter-municipal approaches to improving public services and invigorating their economies. The project’s activities focus on establishing and strengthening Inter-Municipal Cooperation (IMC) partnerships. The activities are owned and driven by the IMC partner cities and municipalities. The project provides technical assistance, grants, and subcontracts that enable partners to leverage available public, private, and donor resources.

The Sustainable Local Development Project:

• Helps its IMC partnerships access Government of Serbia, private, and donor (e.g. EU) investment funds. (In July 2012 there were eight IMCs involving 32 municipalities, 25 businesses and 85 civil society organizations [CSOs].)
  
• Helps strengthen IMC core competencies and the IMC enabling environment in key areas, such as project preparation, capital investment planning, and advancing legislative and policy reforms.
  
• Helps IMC clusters forge strong partnerships with the private sector and civil society to safeguard the public’s interest and support youth advocacy, service delivery and employment.

Agribusiness Project

This five-year economic development project, ending in September 2012, has increased agricultural sales and exports by Serbian firms by more than $120 million and created 7,000 new jobs in six agricultural sub-sectors.

Project components have included:

• Increasing the competitiveness and efficiency of Serbian agribusinesses throughout the value chain in the following sub-sectors: tree fruits; berries; vegetables; mushrooms-herbs-forest fruits; dairy products; and livestock and meat.
  
• Supporting agribusiness-enabling legislation and policies, as well as effective provision of essential agribusiness extension services – such as market information, annual agricultural production estimates, animal and plant health and food safety information – and regulatory oversight, such as licensing, labeling standards, and product certification.
  
• In addition to technical assistance, the USAID Agribusiness Project has run a $3 million grants program. Grants have been used to facilitate investments in agricultural production and processing, food safety, marketing, as well as to support the provision of essential agribusiness extension services and support for producer organizations.
  
• The project’s Women in Agribusiness Program has assisted 600 women from rural areas prepare business plans. The best plans were eligible for start-up grants of up to $15,000.

Opportunity Bank Serbia (previously Opportunity International Savings and Loan which became a bank in May 2006) provides banking services to entrepreneurs and clients with limited access to the banking system. Opportunity Bank also works in rural areas to bring financial services to family farms and SMEs with demonstrated growth potential. Opportunity Bank has branch offices throughout Serbia, including the south, where banking services are limited.

Project components include:

• Granting loans to entrepreneurs, small firms, refugees, agricultural producers and other business ventures unable to access traditional financing due to their lack of either credit guarantees or credit history.
  
• Granting loans to SMEs to support their business needs and development, including start-up businesses.
  
• Providing domestic and international payment transaction services to the bank’s business and personal clients.
  
• Offering euro and Serbian dinar deposit products to personal and business clients looking for good return on their savings.

USAID’s Economic Security Project is a multi-year project that works with youth in marginalized areas to improve their prospects for employment and their ability to pursue commercial ventures. Additionally, it assists manufacturers in Serbia’s poorest regions strengthen their businesses.

The project has two components:

• It provides Serbia’s youth with the skills required to bridge the gap between what is taught in schools and what is required in the workforce in order to successfully launch their careers.
  
• It promoteseconomic growth in underdeveloped municipalities in South Serbia and Sandzak by working with SMEs and industry clusters. The project’s business development strategy involves sector-specific technical assistance to companies with the capacity to expand into neighboring markets.

SEAF is a global investment firm, based in Washington, D.C., that provides growth capital and operational support to businesses in emerging markets that are underserved by traditional sources of capital. It provides equity and quasi-equity (long-term debt) financing to SMEs in Serbia and the region in accordance with its investment policy.

Project components include:

• Financing SMEs that show the potential for growth and meet fund criteria
  
• Training management in participating enterprises
  
• Promoting job creation within its portfolio of companies and more broadly through suppliers, distributors and other stakeholders

• Business Enabling Project
• Sustainable Local Development Project
• Agribusiness project
• Opportunity Bank Serbia
• Economic Security Program
• Small Enterprise Assistance Fund