The money from the IPA pre-accession assistance fund, in the amount of 179.1 million euro, will be spent on implementing concrete projects in Serbia – said the Minister of European Integration, Jadranka Joksimovic for RTS.
She added that 3 billion euro from various sources entered Serbia in the past 15 years, and since 2014 to date, i.e. since she has been the national IPA coordinator in charge of programming funds for Serbia, total of 1.5 billion euro was allocated to the country.
“We have drafted numerous infrastructure projects to be implemented with this money. Also, some of the reforms in the country are funded with this money. Since 2014, we, as in the Republic of Serbia, has been accredited to contract the projects on its own behalf, while earlier the EU was in charge of contracting for us,” said Joksimovic.
She explained that the project implementation process lasts six years:” The programming process runs through the European Commission which tells our Ministry what are the areas it wants to support. After that we inform all other ministries. They deliver the best projects they have to be funded with the EU money.”
Out of 179.1 million euro from IPA funds, 62 million euro will be spent on environmental protection projects, of which 51 million will go towards a wastewater treatment plant in Niš, while 40 million was set aside for entrepreneurship in innovation, of which 15 million is intended for sustainable tourism infrastructure.
“A portion of the funds will be allocated to certain sites and locates that are under the UNESCO protection, 11 million will be spent on energy efficiency, while 20 million euro will be people who are considered vulnerable in terms of housing,” the Minister added.
She also said that that the line ministry would decide who constituted vulnerable groups and added that spending of these funds would be supervised by several institutions.
“In cooperation with civil society and non-governmental organizations, a portion of the money will be allocated to vulnerable groups, some will go to women entrepreneurs, some to young people, and some for retraining programme for the unemployed,” the Minister said.
Source; Serbian Monitor
