S&T Country Report - Albania - WBC-INCO Net

• increase in the standard of living and a reduction in the gap between average
incomes in Serbia and EU member states;
• significant employment increase;
• stronger and steadier regional development;
• strengthening of international trading links, especially with EU member states;
and
• increase in available resources for other sectors, such as education, health
and pension funds.
The Government has set two priority targets for development of the SME sector by
the end of 2007:
• increase the total number of SMEs (sole traders and limited companies) from
270 000 (2002 total) to 400 000; and
• creation of over one million net new jobs in the SME sector.
- ‘Plan of the Government of the Republic of Serbia for Stimulating Small and
Medium-sized Enterprises and Entrepreneurship Development, 2005-2007’
The Programme defines necessary steps to improve the favourable SMEE (Small
and Medium Size Enterprises and Entrepreneurship) environment that relates to:
• Creation of an institutional and legal environment that will support
entrepreneurs’ interests;
• Raising the level of knowledge and skills within the entrepreneurship sector in
order to support new educational profiles with larger mobility and flexibility in
overcoming different requirements of the labour force market;
• Building institutions for non-financial support to the SMEE sector, as well as
development of non-financial services through providing information,
consultancy services, mentoring and training in different business areas;
• Financing and financial measures to support the SMEE;
• Innovations and modern technology application to support the SMEE; and
• Donors and development assistance.
- ‘National Development Plan of UNMIK/Kosovo’
At the time of writing the thematic report, the National Development Plan was not
available. Nevertheless some information could be downloaded from internet.
According to http://www.unmikonline.org/pub/focuskos/aug04/focuskeco3.htm, a
‘Kosovo Development Plan’ would have to consist of the following three stages:
• (i) A full and realistic assessment of the strategic development requirements of
an economy moving towards EU integration;
• (ii) Design and costing of detailed and coherent ministerial strategies to
remove barriers to faster growth, focused on investment needs in the key
areas of human resources, physical infrastructure, and carefully targeted aid to
stimulate the productive sectors of the economy;
• (iii) Rigorous ex-ante assessments of the likely consequences of such a
development programme in terms of generating sustainable accelerated
growth and convergence towards EU standards of living.
As stated in the ESPIG Policy Paper issued in 2004 – ‘Towards a Kosovo
Development Plan. The state of the economy Kosovo and possible ways forward’,
the implementation of the National Development Plan takes place at ministerial level.
It should be vital to regard the drawing up of all the different ministerial strategy
page 8/SRB