The Conference ‘The Prospects for Local and Regional Development in BiH’, which was held in Sarajevo on 23 October 2012, marked the completion of a successful EU funded project „EU Support to Institutional Capacity Building for Regional and Local Economic and SME Development (EURELSMED)“.
The EU funded this project from the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA 2007) in the amount of €2.4 million. During three years of its realisation, the project provided support to the capacity building of local and regional development agencies as well as training for over 500 employees of municipalities in BiH and development agencies.
Vesna Grković, Programme Manager for SMEs and Local Economic Development in the EU Delegation to BiH stated that this project is very relevant to BiH economy given that topic of local development is inadequately presented in BiH. “The Project has managed to articulate needs of local communities for economic development in terms of recognisable project proposals which could be eligible for financing from BiH support programmes and various donors programmes” said Ms. Grkovic.
David Miller, EURELSMED project Team’s leader said that the Project had two components – support to the local economic development and providing services to small and medium enterprises in BiH.
This Conference was good opportunity for presentation of the achieved results of economic development projects aimed to increase capacity of the municipalities in providing services to business subjects. It was stressed at the Conference that the local communities are expected to initiate creation of favourable business environment.
The main participants at the Conference were representatives of municipalities, local and regional development agencies, donor organisations and the EU in BiH.
