The City of Sremska Mitrovica hosted the XVIII regular Assembly of RDA Srem founders held on June 29 ,2016. In accordance with the proposed agenda, the RDA Srem director, Milan Miric, submitted a report on the RDA Srem work for the year 2015.
In the introductory part of the meeting, an overview of the basic activities of RDA Srem was given regarding the implementation of Set of standardized services in 2015, the strengthening of the institutional capacity of RDA Srem and the development of regional projects. It was pointed out that in the next cycle 2016-2020 the most significant capital projects for the region of Srem will be „Integrated irrigation system of the region Srem“, „Regional water supply system Eastern Srem“ and „Protection of the Sava river basin by constructing of communal infrastructure of collection, transport and waste water treatment in Srem“.
In furher presentation, Mr Miric provided more information on the contractual cooperation with several important institutions that have recognized RDA Srem as an important partner in the implementation of its program goals in Serbia. First to be mentioned is a contract with the National Alliance for Local Economic Development – NALED within which the RDA Srem was specified as one of the six regional resource centres in Serbia to support the implementation of a unified procedure for issuing construction permits. Resource Centre RDA Srem has jurisdiction over the entire territory of AP Vojvodina and its 45 municipalities.
Another important cooperation was achieved with the Program for Rural and Regional Development implemented by the Swiss Agency for Rural Development (SDC), which has identified four regions and three regional development agencies in Serbia, of which RDA Srem one of them, as well as an implementation area for projects rural-regional initiatives in Srem. The priority is to define rural-regional initiatives that would subsequently been supported by SDC in technical and financial terms in project preparation, and then finding the funds that can be directed towards the development, especially infrastructure. So far in this cooperation several topics have been highlighted: the use of biomass, tourism and agriculture with the development of SMART irrigation. Initial funding for this phase of cooperation is about 1.5 million Swiss francs.
In the following days, it is expected the important agreement to be signed on cooperation of RDA Srem with the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) on Improving the use of biomass where, RDA Srem together with its Inter-Municipal working group (IMWG) on EE and RES, would identify specific projects as well as proposals for investments in the area of biomass and the most desirable would be CHP plants for production of electricity and thermal energy and investors should to be from the private sector.
At the end of the meeting, it was emphasized that it is currently working on several important local and regional projects within the context of cross-border cooperation with the Republic of Croatia (EU Interreg IPA CRO-SER). The projects are in the field of environmental protection, projects in agriculture, tourism, development of labour force competitiveness and development of private sector.
RDA Srem Assembly session ended with the conclusion that it is necessary to organize a meeting with the mayors of municipalities of Srem region in September, where the importance of the projects carried out by the RDA Srem would be presented and which have resulted in developed study documentation, techno-economic and the spatial-planning documentation providing an important starting point for intensive development and investments in the region of Srem, including more efficient use of EU and national funds.
The report on the work of RDA Srem for 2015 was unanimously adopted.