Balkan Governments Urged to Boost Business Cooperation

Regional cooperation is key to attracting more foreign investment money into the Balkans, stressed participants at the seventh Sarajevo Business Forum in the Bosnian capital on Wednesday.

"There is no country which is able to stand alone, especially in our region," Montenegro's economy minister Vladimir Kavaric told the forum.

"The countries of the Balkans need to see each other as partners facing international competition, rather than competing against each other," Kavaric said, adding that this was especially true when it comes to developing a regional infrastructure network.

Despite the importance of this, governments are not doing enough to create a regional network, experts argued.

"So far, at the next [EU Western Balkans] summit in Paris, Balkan governments will only be able to submit two out of a total of 10 infrastructure projects that the EU decided to finance for the development of the region after last year's summit in Vienna," said Goran Svilanovic, the secretary-general of the Regional Cooperation Council, which aims to foster collaborative development project in south-east Europe.

Promoting the benefits of a united regional economy is one of the main goals of the forum, which will run until Thursday and involves participants from Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

It also allows the public and private sectors to present their business projects in order to attract international investments, particularly in the infrastructure and energy sectors.

The forum attracted more than 1,500 delegates, local media reported, including Qatar's economy and commerce minister, Ahmed bin Jassim Al-Thani, Kuwait's commerce and industry minister Yousef Al Ali, Turkish deputy prime minister...