Serbian FM meets with UNOPS director

Serbian FM meets with UNOPS director

BELGRADE -- Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic met in Belgrade on Monday with Executive Director of United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) Grete Faremo.

He thanked her for the organization helping Serbia recover form the devastating floods in 2014.

"The total value of projects conducted by UNOPS in Serbia since 2010 is around EUR 65 million. The UNOPS is implementing flood recovery projects whose total value is EUR 25 million, and the largest donors are EU IPA funds, Norway, Canada, Great Britain, Switzerland and France," Dacic told reporters after the meeting.

He said that Faremo would on Tuesday visit Obrenovac and other places where the UNOPS had been managing projects, pointing out that Norway had used the institution to allocate "EUR 4.5 million for reconstruction of public buildings, homes and hospitals at 18 locations in Serbia," while Britain "invested GBP 1 million in a flood protection system at the Kolubara basin and in Lazarevac near Belgrade."

"We are working together with the Serbian government on various projects and this cooperation has been ongoing for years now. We currently have six projects worth more than EUR 45 million. We use international standards and local expertise, which gives very good results," said Faremo.

Faremo's visit to Serbia is her first official visit to a European country since she took office last year, but not her first to Serbia, which she visited several times, "since her father, Norwegian politician Osmund Faremo, was the founder and president of the Norway-Yugoslav friendship association," Tanjug said.

"he UNOPS is a fully self-financing organization, receiving no money from the UN budget, but rather...