Expert meeting on Public-private partnership

12.11.2009.
At the "Master" Congress Centre of the Novi Sad Fair, within the scope of the professional segment of "Investexpo", a meeting was held on "Property Management and Public-private Partnership", organised by the Local Economic Development of the City of Novi Sad Office and the "World Youth Bank Network" organisation.

This was an opportunity for the visitors to get acquainted with the application of the public-private partnership, which will be fully effective in Serbia in 2010 after the passing of the Public Property Act.
As it has been explained, local self-governments will then obtain ownership over construction land and can establish partnerships with private entrepreneurs when realising important infrastructure projects.
According to Mr Marin Franolič from the Austrian "Your European systems agency", banks financed about 80 per cent of projects of public-private partnerships before the beginning of the global economic crisis, but now they have withdrawn and most of the projects are financed by funds, and a part is financed by the partners themselves.
- Money is not the only form of capital, but it can take the form of knowledge and labour force. Now, profit is also important, i.e. the project must have a fast return on investment for the financers. This means that private entrepreneurs have to invest, but also to reduce prices and therefore there are fewer such investments – said Mr Franolič.
At the meeting they evaluated, that in a way it was good that Serbia had not started with such projects yet, because the risks would be non-transparent and many projects realised with difficulty. On the other hand, the problem in Serbia is that nothing regarding this has ever been done, but they concluded that public-private partnership is a necessary process expected to happen in our country as well, and for successful realisation of such projects transparency of all parties is necessary.