Mobilizes and capacitates stakeholders to create/initiate both government and non-government institutional solutions and development projects in support of economic growth and decent job generation. Initiatives generated by this program can range from bringing together stakeholders to design and advocate for regulatory solutions that could be especially supportive of a particular kind of market undertaking, to providing content and know-how for technology parks and incubators.
The expected benefit of such initiatives is not only the direct contribution they make to job generation and growth, but also showing by example how stakeholders can make the most out of the resources at their disposal (their own, or co-funded from development funds), but more importantly that policies and collective solutions are ultimately in their hands.
CEVES is already focusing on two sectors that it believes have to be cornerstones of any development strategy for Serbia:
- Rural farm and non-farm economy, as it provides a safety net for nearly 1/5 of Serbia’s population,
- Smart economy, as the best way to ensure growing incomes and broadly spread decent jobs.
Moreover, CEVES plans to develop a sub-program dedicated to raising Serbia’s absorption capacity for EU funds, in which it expects that business associations and local communities will be significant partners.
Subprograms
CEVES’s goal is to contribute to raising the value added of the rural farm and non-farm economy, not only through advocacy for a well-formulated strategy, but also by mobilizing stakeholders into project initiatives. While with the recovery of Serbia’s economy, agricultural employment is expected to decline and the average size of Serbia’s farm holding needs to increase, a strategy and specific solutions are needed to ensure that this is an orderly process and that the sectors safety net capacity is not lost. 55% of Serbia’s population lives in rural areas, of which one third depends on agriculture as a sole source of income or a critical cushion against poverty. Various sources provide different estimates of the importance of subsistence and semi-subsistence farming as a buffer against the effects of the transition and the recent economic crisis. However, the number of individuals actively involved in farming activities seems to be on the decline, particularly in Central Serbia. This “agricultural exodus” is creating an older, and less literate and educated rural population to take on the challenges of modernization reforms the agricultural sector will inevitably go through, and its integration into the European Union framework.
CEVES’s goal is to contribute to the development of smart economy in Serbia, not only through advocacy for a well-formulated strategy, but also by mobilizing stakeholders into project initiatives. Any suitable development strategy for Serbia should include the activation, as well as the additional development, of the high-tech knowledge and capacity that Serbia regularly produces, and then either loses through brain-drain or through obsolescence, because of the lack of adequate employment opportunities.
“Turning brain drain onto brain circulation” is a worthy, longer-term goal. At this point, CEVES plans to take as a good starting point the strengthening of the connection between the country’s high-tech entrepreneurial capacity and its high-tech diaspora. It appears that there is now a cohort of IT and creative industries’ companies growing fast, against all odds, and well out of public scrutiny. In addition, CEVES will explore how to contribute to the effect of Serbia’s current considerable investment into upgrading its scientific research infrastructure and technology parks.
Aims to provide potential stakeholders with the support and know-how needed to access EU funds. CEVES is committed to Serbia’s European path and believes it is extremely important that one critical contribution to Serbia’s development can be made through Europe’s funding. However, it is well known that even some of the New Member States have had difficulties in increasing their absorption capacity, and this certainly threatens to happen in Serbia as well. In other words, CEVES is committed to going beyond the can-do, as it will need to access these funds itself, and develop the capacity to provide trainings and counseling for government and civil society organizations.
SR