The President of the Foreign Trade Chamber of BiH Ahmet Egrlic stated today that the chance has not been missed yet and that he expects BiH to join the Mini Schengen initiative, ie Open Balkans, given that the freedom of movement of goods, services and everything that this initiative entails will benefit the business community in BiH.
Mini Schengen or Open Balkan fits into the overall strategy of forming a single market in the Balkans signed in Sofia last year.
It is one of the processes and I do not know what happened without BiH in it, but it is only a small segment of the formation of a single economic space, a single market – said Egrlic.
As he mentioned, the single market is not only between the six economies of the Western Balkans, but it should be integrated into the EU single market, and we have been offered certain benefits there.
Given that the region will not enter the EU so quickly, the intention is to at least fully integrate the business community and ensure full freedom of movement of people, goods and services.
“CEFTA has achieved good results when it comes to the region and the movement of goods, but when it comes to the movement of services, we are not very satisfied. Exactly no one can say that we have lost something, it is a process in which there is no doubt that BiH will get involved,” Egrlic added.
When it comes to the world exhibition EXPO in Dubai, Egrlic noted that it is not an economic fair, but an exhibition and promotion of countries.
BiH can hardly catch up with that, even if the necessary decisions and resources are made today, because it is a very complex organization. Already in April this year, all materials, presentations and everything that will happen should have been submitted. All the accompanying activities at that exhibition have already been agreed, just as we should have already arranged B2B business meetings with various businessmen from all over the world – Egrlic concluded.
