United Group executives met on Thursday with the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Suma Chakrabarti, in Amman, where EBRD's annual meeting is taking place on May 9-10.
After the meeting, Chakrabarti talked to N1 about EBRD’s investment plans in Southeast Europe, and named three key areas that are essential for the development of the region.
So, Mr. President, you said yesterday that quality is much much more important than quantity. What does it mean in terms of EBRD investments in Southeast Europe?
So what we are really looking for is to help that whole region, Western Balkans, Southeast Europe, make a transition to a fully effective, sustainable, market economies. So it means that we are looking for quality projects, projects that really change people’s lives of course, but also bankable, projects for the EBRD that the commercial banking sector may not want to do. Because the risks are too high, but they are very valuable. That’s what it means.
Are you satisfied that there is a $1 billion per year investment in that region? What’s the project, what’s the industry that you find the most bankable and profitable?
Look, I think for the region, there are three things that are fundamentally important. One is infrastructure, cross-border infrastructure. Another is energy, really important. Energy supply, but also energy security and energy efficiency as well. But the third thing, that I think is increasingly important in the region, is what we call “soft connectivity”. In other words, stock exchanges linking up, as we are trying to make them do, electricity distribution linking up much more, digitalisation, all of these things are very very important and we’re gonna be investing in more of that. And by the way, we’re gonna be looking in the next six months whether we can do even more in the Western Balkans than we’re already doing.
And for the end, United Group is one of those companies, their business in all those Southeast Europe, including Croatia and Slovenia, which is part of the EU, but also Slovenia, Serbia and Bosnia, they are waiting for transition to the EU. The next summit of the EBRD will be in Sarajevo. What’s the message for the region, from the EBRD perspective?
Very simple. More Europe. Because I think for EBRD, what we’re really trying to do, is help the Western Balkans on the accession process to European Union membership, that means doing more reforms, of course, in the region, to try and make themselves ready for the European union, raising quality standards but also investing and making the people better off in the region too. That’s what you’ll get from the EBRD.
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