Less than a month after he visited Sarajevo where he met with members of the BiH Presidency, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani fulfilled the given promise and gave a green light for the establishment of the Friendship Fund from which direct incentives for the development of small and medium enterprises in BiH will be given, it was announced.
All three members of the BiH Presidency have been informed about this decision of the Emir Al-Thani through the Embassy of Qatar in BiH, in accordance with the commitment of that country to help all BiH citizens – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. That is the fact that the Qatari officials and diplomats wish to put an emphasis on.
Operationalization of the idea on the establishment of the Fund is in progress, with the end goal of strengthening the BiH economy and decreasing unemployment, especially among the youth so that, as the Qatari officials believe, tens of thousands of educated and talented people from BiH would not feel the need to leave their country and spread across Europe and the world in search of a better life.
The delegation of Qatar requested a term from the Presidency of BiH in the second week of March, when the delegation will arrive from Qatar and discuss with representatives of authorities and non-governmental sector about how to bring the Friendship Fund to life and achieve first results as soon as possible. In order to prevent any violations and misinterpretations, the Fund will be supervised by the representatives of Qatar.
The Fund will be established based on the model after which Qatar established the same funds in Tunisia and Japan, where they yielded extraordinary results, especially in terms of new workplaces in real sector. Hence, 5.000 workplaces have been created in Tunisia through the Fund.
The readiness of Qatar, especially the Qatar Investment Agency, to invest in highways through concessions is already known, but they are also interested in tourism projects, which is a branch of economy that they see as a big chance for BiH.
(Source: avaz.ba)
