USAID’s Representative in South Serbia Today

22. March 2011.

Vranje, Bujanovac – The results achieved regarding the strengthening of small and medium – sized companies in South Serbia are going to be the main reason of today’s visit to Bujanovac of Marilyn Schmidt, Deputy Mission Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Serbia. Yesterday, Mrs. Schmidt signed in Vranje an agreement on providing further support to development of small and medium-sized companies and she talked with Miroljub Stojcic, the mayor of Vranje, about the modes in which the city of Vranje could provide support to this sector.

Also, Marilyn Schmidt talked with representatives of six small and medium-sized companies for which the USAID made it possible to streamline their visual identities, to improve their brands and to develop modern materials that are necessary for their marketing activities in new markets. These companies are going to present their business results achieved thanks to this mode of support, as well as the results of their participation in fairs in the country and abroad.

The program for supporting participation in fairs made it possible for the companies that participated in the said program to increase their sales to 11 million US dollars in the period from 2008 until now, as well as to get into the German, Russian, Belarusian, Czech and Polish markets.

The USAID’s delegation is going to visit production plants of the “Schampi-co” and “Celiku” companies, where they’ll familiarize themselves with the results of the competitiveness improvement program. These two companies are the most successful ones out of 137 small and medium-sized companies that are included in the USAID’s MEGA (Municipal Economic Growth Activity) Program.