Countries: Serbia

A large industrial center in the former FRY, the municipality of Pancevo, located in the province of Vojvodina and just a few kilometers from the capital Belgrade, suffered serious economic losses during the past 15 years. The bankruptcy of the Utva agricultural aircraft factory, Staklara glass factory, and other large agricultural production and processing complexes left more than 25,000 citizens unemployed. In order to revitalize Pancevo’s economy and ensure its sustainable development, the municipal authorities undertook the responsibility defined in Serbia’s new self-government regulation and initiated the process of creating a Local Economic Development (LED) strategy. However, this process in Serbia historically lacked input and feedback from citizens and local stakeholders. Without such involvement, policy has often been divorced from the economic reality of those it affects, and thereby fails to create the ownership necessary for implementation.

 

Through its Community Revitalization through Democratic Action (CRDA) program and the implementing partner for Vojvodina, America’s Development Foundation (ADF), invested about $22,000 to organize a set of meetings where this process was discussed by representatives from the municipal authorities as well as the business and civic sector. Through direct contact and work among four task forces, these sectors managed to reach a consensus on key aspects of the strategy.

 

The newly formed public-private partnership recognized four areas of the LED process where Pancevo has the biggest potential to achieve sustainable development: SME development, tourism, infrastructure and foreign direct investment. A task force was formed for each area in order to develop a detailed plan to be incorporated into the overall LED strategy.

 

More than 1,000 citizens and stakeholders participated in 39 workshops, round tables, meetings and other public gatherings and actively participated in drafting the LED strategy for Pancevo. The profile of participants varied from municipal officials and business leaders to university professors and motivated citizens. The meetings resulted in the proposal of a LED strategy that was distributed to all participants in the process with the possibility to provide feedback and inputs. Eventually, after collecting over 1,000 inputs and feedback, members of the task forces cooperated with the Belgrade Institute for Economic Science and Research to develop a map of resources, SWOT analyzes and the final draft of the LED strategy.

 

The draft strategy was officially delivered to the Pancevo municipality department for economy and agriculture. In addition, based on that document, the LED task forces signed two project agreements – one with the Belgrade Institute for Economic Science and Research and one with UN-HABITAT.