This year's Kopaonik Business Forum was officially ended at the hotel Grand Kopaonik with the closing remarks of Aleksandar Vlahović, President of the Serbian Association of Economists.
To our great pleasure, this year’s Forum was again an important meeting place for establishing business connections and dialogues between the business, political and academic elite. This year’s Forum included 33 panels, eight plenary addresses and two special events dedicated to the current economic, political and social challenges, with participation of approximately 200 renowned experts and eminent individuals from the domestic and regional business and political circles, focusing on the Sustainable Development Agenda. In the context of the Agenda, and in addition to the previously defined topics, the rising geopolitical tensions and the upcoming economic crisis also gave rise to conversations about the uncertain projections of global economic growth, increase in prices of energy sources, food and raw materials, about problems in the global supply chains and the increasing inflation pressures.
Despite the ongoing uncertainties, Serbia needs to establish mechanisms to accelerate its development processes and structural systemic reforms that secure higher resilience of the economy to external shocks, increase of productivity and competitiveness, while preserving investments. This requires reformatory progress in two key sectors – education and human capital development, as well as improvement of the quality of the institutions and the business environment. Participants of the Forum have also agreed that fiscal policy should be based on the principles of precaution and austerity, which also implies a lower deficit than the projected one, a more comfortable fiscal space, as well as reduction of debt. Monetary policy in line with the defined objective should continue with the implementation of a set of sophisticated measures so as to be able to respond efficiently to the existing and expected inflationary pressures, without jeopardizing economic activities. The most relevant conclusions and recommendations of the four-day constructive work and discussion will be forwarded to the relevant institutions and companies. This will be our contribution to designing feasible and efficient policies with the aim of continuing Serbia’s economic transition in a faster and high-quality manner.
Despite the fact that the Forum was held in highly challenging times and in line with the incumbent health and safety epidemiological restrictions, we are proud of the exceptional interest of the business and professional circles and media for this important event. By organizing this edition of the Forum, with approximately 1250 participants and more than 100 accredited journalists from the country and abroad, we have achieved our objective and demonstrated once again that Kopaonik Business Forum is the most important event of its kind in the region. In addition to the attending participants, during the course of four days, the program was viewed in live stream on YouTube platform by approximately 7,000 viewers.
The Forum received outstanding media coverage and resounded heavily among the public. All photographs and video materials, news and press clippings are posted on our website www.kopaonikbusinessforum.rs, and a complete analysis of the media content is under way.
The next, jubilee, 30th edition of the Kopaonik Business Forum will be held at the same place, from March 5 to 8, 2023.
