Being part of our Chamber means being part of a sizable business family
This challenging year has surprised the whole world. Shocked by the new situation which emerged because of the COVID-19 pandemic, every person, entrepreneur, company, association and almost every segment of the private and public structures tried to react in the most effective way within their framework and possibilities, to overcome the crisis and keep stability. Following the examples of civilized world, Serbian Government intervened on two occasions with specific sets of economic measures and provided assistance to businesses to be able to mitigate the consequences of COVID-19.
Through a continuing dialogue inside the global network of Italian chambers – Assocamerestero and Sistema Italia – our Chamber reacted depending on the situation, sticking with the recommended measures and adapting its activities and initiatives while providing maximum support to companies in dealing with both big and small issues they were experiencing. In these trying times, we tried to assist every company that approached us, but first and foremost, our member companies.
During after the state of emergency in Serbia, we intensified our dissemination activities. In the bilingual newsletter, the Chamber provided information on current events, from cross-border movements, with the companies' needs while offering, to info on measures and regulations of the Government of Serbia and also the Government of Italy. This was accompanied by online activities that became our daily routine. We did everything we possibly could and thanks to the very good cooperation with this members, whom we wish to extend our gratitude, we jointly organized many webinars covering current topics. Some of these topics are: work safety within the light of emergencies and providing a much better business environment; the significance of online business; legal interpretations of regulations and application of economic measures; documentation preparation; application of various procedures associated with tax policy; new financing opportunities for businesses from EU funds and EU projects, cyber security and many more. The dialogue between businesses and institutions continued this time within an online format. This initiative ended in cooperation with another three bilateral chambers in Serbia and it was very well-received because it was always providing unambiguous responses to the business community.
During previous months, Italian companies' interest in placing many on the Serbian market has notably increased, mostly in agri-food, pharmaceutical, chemical, machine, textile and furniture industries. This trend confirms that Serbia continues to be a very interesting market. I would like to underline that Serbian companies have also had many export and import related requests towards Italy.
We missed most the live events, our gatherings and company visits. We're compensating this, as much as possible, with frequent communication and information exchange with this members. During previous months, by doing this of working brought us even nearer to one another and made us stronger, making us all a part of one big business family under the auspices from the Chamber.
We hope that soon the problem in our country and worldwide will stabilize and that we might find this pandemic ends, in order to be able to bring about even better cooperation between Italy and Serbia. Our Business Scouting and Business Networking initiatives are enabling companies to recognize business opportunities, to establish new business contacts, to conduct targeted market researches and to organize business missions and B2B meetings. These initiatives can accelerate the consolidation of recent investments and trade relations between companies, within our case, between Italy and Serbia.
