As part of the EAR’s municipal support programme for 27 municipalities in north-eastern Serbia, €4 million has been allocated to support a major development project to construct an industrial zone at Ecka near the town of Zrenjanin, “capital” of the Banat region
Zrenjanin, with a population of 80,000, is the third largest town in the Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina. As a whole the municipality has 132,000 inhabitants and has pursued a very successful development policy over the past few years. One industrial zone has already been set up, but is now entirely occupied, and the municipality thus applied to the Agency’s MSPNES programme for assistance to establish a second zone at Ečka on the outskirts of the town.
The project was promoted at a press event in Zrenjanin on 2 July. This was attended by a European Union delegation consisting of Ambassadors Josep Lloveras (European Commission) and Ron Van Dartel (Netherlands), and, from the Agency’s Belgrade Centre, Daniel Giuglaris (head of office) and Vassilis Petrides (programme manager). Welcoming them all, Mayor Goran Knežević stated that the visit affirmed EU support for the town as a place of long-established European values. Expressing thanks for the donation, he highlighted its significance for this industrially-developed and geographically important part of Serbia, and stated that construction of the Zone would create about 8,000 new jobs.
Presenting details of the project to the delegation and the press, deputy mayor Predrag Stankov pointed out that the Ečka project had been one of 105 submitted by the 27 municipalities covered by the EAR’s north-east Serbia programme. The Agency had decided to support only four of these projects from the grant fund attached to the programme, and the new industrial zone had come top of the list – hence the generous level of EU funding. The town had already invested €2.2 million, the EU would provide a further €4 million, and the Serbian National Investment Programme an additional €1.3 million. This budget would be spent on building and connecting the complete infrastructure needed for the 72-hectare zone – networks for water supply, sewage disposal and surface water drainage, telecommunications, gas and electrical systems, roads, security fencing.
Daniel Giuglaris confirmed that the Zrenjanin project had been chosen on the basis of a detailed feasibility study, and had met all the necessary criteria – it had met stipulated technical requirements, justified social and economic demands, secured co-financing from other sources, and proved its economic viability. It would boost the economic development of the town and the region, and thus fitted well into the overall purpose of the Agency’s municipal support programmes. Since 2001, there had been three of these, focusing on the east, south and south-west of Serbia, but this, the fourth, in the north-east of the country was by far the biggest. Covering the three districts of the Banat region, it also included the Branicevo district centred on Požarevac south of the Danube. It thus completed the huge geographical circle of municipal support programmes financed by the CARDS programme.
The north-east support programme, Giuglaris went on, included a grant fund totalling €13.5 million for financing major priority investment projects such as the Ečka Zone. The tendering procedure to find a contractor for this was now well advanced and it was expected to let the contract by the end of August. |
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