Serbia to work on improvement of cross-border trade in cooperation with World Bank

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Construction, Transportation and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic spoke today with World Bank's Country Director for Southeast Europe Ellen Goldstein about regional networking, removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers, and the improvement of Serbia's ranking on the Doing Business list.

- By initiating the Berlin Process, the European Commission has set regional networking and transportation projects as top priorities in the EU integration process. The World Bank is interested in partaking in this process not only through support to concrete infrastructure projects, but also by monitoring the reforms that Western Balkan countries implement to facilitate the exchange of goods and services within the region and between that region and the EU - said Goldstein.

Mihajlovic noted that Serbia had already implemented key reforms requested by the European Commission, such as the reorganization of public enterprises in the field of transport, the establishment of perfect competition in the railway sector, and the improvement of cross-border trade.

- In the following period, we will be working with the Trade Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the Customs Administration and other government bodies on the improvement of cross-border trade, all in cooperation with the World Bank - said Mihajlovic.

She added that cross-border trade was one of the key areas this year for improving the ranking on the Doing Business list, stressing that the objective was to have Serbia ranked among the top 30 countries.