 |
From the opening of the business incubator in Nis in southern Serbia. |
Backed by development aid funds, the research foundation is acting as a midwife for start-ups in Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Company development experts from SINTEF are currently visiting both countries to set up industrial “incubators”.
Four of ten out of work
SINTEF’s people will stay on for a while to help run the incubators, which are centres that help entrepreneurs to get their companies going and support the start-ups through the initial phases of their existence.
New jobs are badly needed in both Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the regions currently being visited by the SINTEF research staff, the rate of unemployment is probably around forty percent!
SINTEF is planning a similar scheme in Macedonia, and is also considering helping in the same way in Moldova.
Centres in Serbia...
On Friday September 30 a “business incubator” was inaugurated in the city of Nis in southern Serbia.
The centre offers consulting services and financial support to newly established companies in the mechanical engineering industry. SINTEF has played a central role in planning the centre, which 14 new companies are currently moving into.
With financial backing from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, the SINTEF people will act as consultants both for the new companies themselves and for the locally owned company that runs the incubator.
...and in Bosnia
On Tuesday October 18 a similar centre was opened in the university town of Tuzla in Bosnia. Here too, SINTEF has led the planning stage.
Symbolically, the centre lies only a stone’s throw from the spot where 70 young people lost their lives when a shell exploded there in 1995. The Norwegian-financed “Business Innovation and Technology Centre” (BIT Centre) will create knowledge-intensive jobs in this war-torn country. The centre is an incubator for companies in the information and communication technology sector.
The new centre is opening with four tenant companies, one of which has already started, while the other three are still being established. Local young people who have recently finished the university education are behind all four companies.
Message for Norwegian companies
SINTEF senior consultant Torkel Ystgaard is the project manager and director of the foundation that will run the centre in Bosnia. Both he and his colleague Morten Muus Falck, who has led SINTEF’s efforts in Serbia, hope that Norwegian industry will pick up the news about the centres being set up in the Balkans.
“The economy here is still lying on the ground with its back broken, but in a little while this region will experience significant economic growth, which will make it very interesting for Norwegian companies, not only as far as sales are concerned, but also when they are looking for suppliers”, say Ystgaard and Muus Falck.
Norwegian development aid
The two centres, which will be financed by Norwegian development aid funds, are the first of their kind in the two countries.
Contact:
By Svein Tønseth
