Investor Outreach Event Highlights the Western Balkans as an Investment Destination
Investor Outreach Event Highlights the Western Balkans as an Investment Destination
ZURICH, JUNE 29, 2005—The European Investor Outreach Program (EIOP), a Vienna-based initiative designed to increase foreign direct investment into the Western Balkans, launched the first in a series of outreach events designed to put key regional site selection data directly into the hands of local investors.
The EIOP is a new initiative co-financed by the Austrian government and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a member of the World Bank Group. The program works closely with investment promotion intermediaries from all EIOP beneficiary countries—Albania, Bosnia and Herze-govina, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro—to reach out to the European business community and market investment opportunities in priority sectors.
Today’s event, held jointly with the Swiss Organization for Facilitating Investment (SOFI), presented the findings of a new EIOP regional FDI competitiveness benchmarking study focused on opportunities in the automotive components and food and beverages sectors. Presenting on behalf of the EIOP was Dermot Coffey, Manager of the Vienna facility, and Harald Jedlicka, Investment Promotion Associate, EIOP.
” The study provides information on measures that are of most interest to potential investors—for example, the cost of doing business and the availability of input factors—for sectors that we think hold the highest potential for investment,” said Coffey. The countries are benchmarked against each other as well as against the most important countries in their peer group, the new EU member states.
Coffey and Jedlicka were joined by Arianne Bauer from SOFI and by representatives from regional investment promotion agencies, who outlined the support services available to companies to assess business opportunities in the region.
For information
Angela Gentile, agentile@worldbank.org,
t. 202.473.3509