Sarajevo Business Forum (SBF) 2010, First international investment Conference, scheduled for 6. And 7. April 2010, was presented, earlier today, to the accredited ambassadors representing member states of the European Union (EU) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The idea and concept of SBF was presented to them by Mr. Amer Bukvic, Chief executive officer of Bosna Bank International and Dr. Murat Ramadanovic, the Head of economic diplomacy section with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ambassadors of Norway, Bulgaria, Rumania and Poland attended today's meeting at the BBI headquarters in Sarajevo, along with other diplomatic representatives from the Embassies of Germany, Slovenia, Check Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Holland and Denmark.

Mr. Bukvic, director of BBI, whose VIP Business Club is organizing SBF in cooperation with VIP Business Club of the Islamic Development Bank (Tiqah), Global Alliance for International Development (GAPID) and the Bushnak Group, briefed the EU Ambassadors present at the meeting on the importance of the forthcoming Conference  for the whole region of South East Europe and not only for BH.

„Sarajevo Business Forum is not a one day event or a onetime conference, nor is it a conference supposed to benefit only Bosnia and Herzegovina’.  Mr. Bukvic explained. SBF 2010 will also focus on business projects from neighboring Serbia and Croatia as well, while subsequent Forums in the years to come, will actively involve regional countries from South East Europe, two of them each year.

Mr. Bukvić also mentioned that, apart from Serbia and Croatia, which will be invited to present their business projects and investment opportunities to potential foreign investors, other regional countries will be given opportunity to attend the conference.

The EU ambassadors were asked to provide assistance in promoting SBF in their home countries, by bringing it to the attention of their highly sophisticated business sectors, particularly to potential investors and other interested parties in countries they represent.

Ambassadors expressed their sympathy and unequivocal support for the idea of SBF seeing it as a potentially very significant  economic event, especially in light of the fact that BH, a country in economic transition, is still trying to come to terms with its reconstruction and process of economic renewal , on its way to a fully fledged market economy and viable  liberal democracy.

Both this, as well as meeting held one day earlier, with the diplomatic representatives from members states of CEFTA association, (states still aspiring for the EU membership), it was pointed out that BH companies should create alliances and partnerships with their counterparts from the countries in the region, in order to jointly seek market participation in the countries of the foreign markets in general and the Middle East in particular.

It was also agreed that SBF ought to become a permanent and continuous platform which will outlast the first Conference and continue to exist long in the future, so the projects for which investors become interested are followed up and executed.