Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajić said at a meeting with the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Mirko Šarović in Sarajevo that cooperation between the two countries, which is great, could be even better and successful.
“We are here to solve problems regarding the free movement of goods, there are some non-tariff barriers and competent authorities are working on their elimination,” said Deputy Prime Minister Ljajić and added that common interest is for trade between the two countries to be carried out with ease and that this year could be a record year for trade.
“For us, Bosnia and Herzegovina is the third export market for our goods and we want to continue developing this cooperation,” he said.
“Our countries are too small, therefore the trilateral was created. In September we are planning to open a joint trade and tourist office in Istanbul and it will be a chance for our entrepreneurs to spread to other markets,” said Ljajić.
“We also want to improve tourism, so we presented a cycling tour Belgrade-Sarajevo-Dubrovnik in order to compete with the EU and support the development of tourism. We want to attract as many Chinese tourists as possible since 100 million of Chinese people a year travel and we want to offer to Chinese tour operators the opportunity to visit the places where the movie “Walter defends Sarajevo” was filmed, so that they would visit our countries,” Ljajić said.
Minister Šarović said the problems faced by businessmen and poultry processors when exporting to Serbia were also discussed.
“We talked about some of the barriers, especially when it comes to the laboratory findings for Salmonella where Serbia is not harmonized with European standards, and Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing certain problems,” said Minister Šarović.
He concluded that certain improvements have been made, but that further efforts are needed to fully resolve the matter.
