Montenegro is continuing to meet the requirements, notably regarding the rule of law and fundamental human rights, Fule told Mina news agency. The authorities are working on reforms, enforcing laws and establishing results in the fight against organised crime and corruption, he said.

Asked if the Montenegrin authorities had been given a concrete requirement regarding the fight against organised crime and corruption, Fule said the European Commission was in contact with the government in Podgorica and closely following its pre-accession efforts.

He said he recently met with Prime Minister Igor Luksic and that he was encouraged by his determination about reforms and his awareness of issues that needed particular attention, so as not to lose the momentum and miss the meeting in June which the Council was expected to decided on the start of Montenegro’s EU entry talks.

Those issues include the struggle against corruption and organised crime, where the focus should be on the effective application of laws, the strengthening of institutional capacities, notably when it comes to the outcome of investigations, prosecutions and sentences at the high level, said Fule.

The EU’s new approach to negotiations on the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security will provide for greater focus on those issues through monitoring, clear conditions and pointing to challenges early in the negotiating process, he said.

Fule said the European Commission would present a report on reform implementation this spring, which would serve as the basis for the decision on the launching of the entry talks in June.

Asked if recent protests by disgruntled citizens would impact the report, Fuele said citizens’ protests and peaceful demonstrations were evidence of differences of opinion, which was an element of functional democracy.

They are even more important when they concern the rule of law, an area in which we all wish for further progress, he said. We will continue following concrete results which concern the improvement of the socioeconomic situation and the fight against corruption and organised crime, he added.

Wholly-owned by the Hungarian OTP Bank, DSK Bank is the second largest bank in Bulgaria. The EBRD loan is part of the Bank’s Residential Energy Efficiency Credit Line (REECL) Framework aimed at addressing energy wastage in Bulgaria’s residential sector.

DSK Bank will use the EBRD loan to finance sustainable energy investments undertaken by Bulgarian households, such as thermal insulation of walls, installation of energy efficient windows, boilers and central heating systems, among other modern energy saving techniques.

The project will improve the energy efficiency of Bulgaria’s residential sector, helping households to save energy and reduce their bills. It will also contribute to the implementation of the European Directive on energy performance of buildings in Bulgaria, thus helping the Bulgarian government meet targets on buildings energy efficiency.

REECL Framework was launched in 2005 to address energy wastage in Bulgaria’s residential sector and has financed around 30,000 small-scale residential energy efficiency projects in six years. Building on the success already achieved, in 2011 the framework was extended by an additional €40 million.

Since the beginning of the EBRD’s operations in Bulgaria, the Bank has invested over €2.5 billion in various sectors of the country’s economy, mobilising additional investment in excess of €5.7 billion.

It is expected the system to enable bigger efficiency and earning without creating unnecessary expenses and waste time for transportation, especially for fresh fruits and vegetable by farmers, but also for trade companies.

New government project will provide bigger competitiveness on the market for trading crop plants and for achieving high prices of products. The system will function by sending SMS messages, after which the customers will be able to see description and quantities of offered products, and then send a short message. The customer who has offered the highest price will get a signal how to conclude a contract, sources of competent ministry explain.

Depending on the pilot project success, the system will be upgraded, so that it can be used by all farmers and agricultural product purchasers in the future.

In the textile and clothing sector, the number of workers has collapsed from 160,000 in 1990 to around 40,000 in 2010. In all of this, it is the nation’s youth – its most vibrant asset – that has taken the brunt of the pain, as half of young people are unemployed.

Serbia’s textile industry is representative of much of its industry, and Serbia’s labour market trends are representative of those in all of the post-Yugoslav states.

It is true that Europe’s textile industry has been put on the defensive by the emerging Far East. However, the Serbian textile industry’s decline was not inevitable.

In recent decades, the sector – one of the most globalised in the world – has seen employment shift from Germany to Poland, from Hong Kong to China, from Italy to Hungary and Turkey, and then to Bulgaria and Romania. In many peripheral regions in southeast Europe, textiles have become a locomotive of growth and exports, creating hundreds of thousands of low-skilled jobs.

Bulgaria was able to increase its exports in the sector from $280 million to more than $2 billion between 1990 and 2010, contributing more than 100,000 industrial jobs to the Bulgarian economy. Why has not this been possible in Serbia, Bosnia or Albania?

The same questions can be asked about other industries in the Balkans.

Why are there more than 10,000 jobs in the furniture industry in the central Turkish city of Kayseri, far from any forests, but not in Bosnia? Why are household appliance producers doing well in Slovenia, Romania and Turkey, but not in the Western Balkans? And why is there so little agro-processing for the EU market?

One answer is that the growth model adopted in the Western Balkans over the last decade has discouraged governments from even asking such questions.

Driven by a distrust of Socialist planning and a fear of corruption, the economic policies prescribed have had a laissez-faire flavour and focused not on specific sectors of the economy but on the general business environment.

Policymakers have been praised for avoiding the temptation to shield declining areas of the economy from the discipline of the markets. At the same time these policymakers have found it hard to acknowledge when former Socialist businesses were past the point of possible recovery, overburdened by debts and in urgent need of liquidation.

The key ingredients of the standard recipes for economic development remain valid. A stable macroeconomic environment and a good business climate are necessary conditions for sustained recovery. But they are not sufficient.

In a region ravaged by conflict and economic decline, a policy mix based on “hands-off” privatisation and deregulation cannot be sufficient to launch a sustained economic recovery. Even during periods of relative economic growth and high inflows of foreign investment (FDI), the employment generated by the new entrepreneurial private sector was not sufficient to offset the number of jobs lost in the restructuring and privatisation process.

Then came the financial crisis of 2008, which has wiped out more jobs than were generated during the entire recovery period.

While the recovery lasted, there was hope that FDI would accelerate by itself and begin to generate more employment. Now it is clear that this is unlikely to happen. Facing increasing pressure to generate jobs and dwindling options on how to do so, regional policymakers have begun taking desperate measures, such as dolling out large, blanket subsidies to foreign investors – the kind of step that has so often given industrial policy a bad name.

Last but not least, the credibility of Western Balkan integration into the EU market could be enhanced.

For the Western Balkans, the last few years have seen agonisingly slow progress in this area, with no country other than Croatia having so much as opened EU accession talks. The more realistic the prospect of EU membership is, the bigger are the incentives for those interested in long-term investments in industrial production in the Balkans.

None of this is to suggest that there is a silver bullet for job creation. The Balkan economic development challenge is enormous, made all the more difficult by the current economic and financial conditions in Europe.

But re-industrialisation has taken place in recent years in a number of new member states and candidates, from Poland to Slovakia to Turkey.

Numerous industrial development clusters – from Timisoara in western Romania to the Istanbul region and many Turkish tiger cities – have seen growth and success. In all these cases, the political elites at the national and local levels have made the integration of local businesses into global chains of industrial production a strategic priority.

Allowing the Western Balkans to continue down its current economic path is not an option.

Today’s lack of employment opportunities is generating too much despair, especially among the young. There is, in fact, no greater and more urgent social and economic issue in the region. Fortunately, examples of successful industrial recoveries abound. All that is required to change the fate of people in Leskovac and in countless other Balkan towns is to take those lessons to heart.

A year earlier, 17 per cent of Bulgaria’s population lived in urban regions, 45 per cent in intermediate regions and 38 per cent in rural areas. In 2010, Bulgaria’s urban population grew 7.7 per 1,000, while population in intermediate and rural areas declined by 8.9 and 13.2 per 1,000 respectively.

In early 2010, 41 per cent of the EU population lived in urban areas, 35 per cent in intermediate areas and 23 per cent in rural areas. Ireland, Slovakia and Estonia has the largest rural population, while Malta, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

has the largest urban population. Sweden (56 per cent), Estonia (52 per cent) and Bulgaria (45 per cent) reported the largest population growth in intermediate regions.

The rise in the country’s production of cereals was due to per hectare yields (average production per hectare) growing by 37.1 pct for wheat; 23.5 pct for barley and two-row barley; 21 pct for oats; 3.6 pct for maize.

According to INS data, the wheat production last year was 7.103 mln tonnes compared to 5.812 mln tonnes in 2010, that of barley and two-row barley was 1.355 mln tonnes (1.311 mln tonnes in 2010), whereas the production of oat last year topped 376,000 tonnes, compared to 304,000 tonnes in 2010.

Romania’s total surface under cereals was 5.243 mln hectares in 2011, compared to 5.041 mln hectares in 2010. Of this, wheat covered 1.928 mln hectares last year, slightly down compared to the 2.162 mln hectares cultivated in 2010; maize was cultivated on 2.613 mln hectares, by 515,000 hectares more than the 2.098 million hectares cultivated in 2010.

Apart from the TOS, the Serbian stand includes the tourist organizations of Belgrade, Vojvodina, Novi Pazar and Sjenica.

Serbia will present its entire tourist offer at the fair, with an emphasis on gastronomy, festivals, nature, the Danube, active vacations, rural tourism, camps, wine routes, the path of Roman emperors in Serbia, short city breaks, as well the program for the young.

Special attention is devoted to the promotion of Serbia’s cuisine, which is the focus TOS’s marketing campaign in 2012, the statement reads.

According to U.S. announcements, the company will invest USD 600 million in the forthcoming period.

At the same time, the two countries’ total economic cooperation should improve after a lengthy standstill brought about by the dispute as regards the Nis-based tourist agency Srbija Turist.

After extensive talks and several international arbitrations, the several years’ long dispute between the Republic of Serbia Privatisation Agency and U.S. company Uniworld Holdings owned by U.S. businessman of Serbian origin Srba Ilic, the release specifies.

At the initiative of the Ministry of Economy and Regional Development, the government adopted the decision to introduce the decision of the arbitration council of the International Arbitration Court on the basis of which Srbija Turist company would be restored to U.S. company Uniworld.

The arbitration also envisages that the Uniworld is obliged to invest additional USD 3.4 million so as to meet the standards for its highest categorization.

In this way, conditions have been created for the normalization of relations and winning the support for realization of direct U.S. investments in the Serbian market.

In 2003, Uniworld purchased the Nis-based agency Srbija Turist and prepared a three-year investment programme worth USD 9 million, but the Privatisation Agency cancelled the project in 2006 for non-abidance by obligations.

The 38th food fair gathered many companies from Montenegro and guests from abroad. Around 50 Serbian companies will present themselves at the event.

A government and business delegation from Serbia is taking part in the fair, led by Minister of Agriculture and Trade Dusan Petrovic and President of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce Milos Bugarin.

Montenegro’s Prime Minister Igor Luksic opened the event by stating that the diversity and quality of the products on display were impressive.

Luksic noted that a series of agreements between Montenegro and Serbia that were signed on Tuesday helped boost investments in agriculture.

According to him, the countries of the region should continue carrying out activities that will guarantee the availability of quality and safe food to everyone.

Serbia has excellent cooperation with Montenegro and both sides want to improve the relations further, Petrovic remarked.

The governments are there to facilitate business for companies, he added.

“I think we have made today a great step so that the people in Serbia and Montenegro would be better off and find things easier than they have been so far,” he stated.

Meetings between Serbian and Montenegrin companies will be held on the second day of the fair, organized by the Serbian and Montenegrin chambers of commerce and USAID.

Visitors will be able to see Serbia’s exhibition area during the fair. It was organized by the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and Ministry of Agriculture and Trade.

The fair gathers companies involved in the food, agriculture and packaging industries.

Two Italian and eight Macedonian companies will build the hydro plants, following Monday’s signing of the concession agreements at the Ministry of Economy.

Minister Valon Saraqini said the plants would be constructed at rivers Bistrica, Pena, Brza Voda, Kriva Reka, Odranska, Beloviska, Baciska, Jablanica, bringing the total number of concession agreements for small hydro plants to 68.

“The prior 47 agreements include plants with total installed capacity of 34,7MW and annual output of 140GWh”, he added.

The total investment for all hydro power plants is worth EUR 100 million.

The next procedure for allocation of water concessions for electricity production would be implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning, in line with the Law on Waters.