Britain's Chamber of Commerce Chairman expands numerous projects to bring to Kosovo

The chairman of this office, Mariano Davies, has said that this ode's mission is best summed up under the slogan “Cosovo is going gren” (Kosovo towards Green, a strategy in which it is envisioned to bring in numerous projects. Oda, among other things, is managing to facilitate trade ties between Great Britain and Kosovo.

Davies has shown how the pandemic has not stopped Oda's activity, since virtual activities, such as internet workshops and training, have been offered at all times, in order to develop capacity and deliver a message of hope for entrepreneurs in Kosovo, that soon everything will return to normal. These virtual programmes have been well received, as the same have brought international expertise to Kosovo.

Among the numerous projects, Davies has indicated that they will bring a scholarship programme for students to Kosovo.

“We will implement a scholarship programme that will allow us to work with Kosovo universities and colleges, not necessarily only in Pristina, to bring some of the finest minds to Britain to become part of education to any of the universities in Britain. And if we do, then we will manage to expand tomorrow's opportunities in Kosovo. We're talking to a number of organizations, including Government, which are very supportive. We've already talked to the Ministry of Education and Trade, Economics. They support it and it has the support of the Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well. I mentioned Albania's Business Network earlier. They're supporting that too, and in their agenda they have a lot of things for the education sector, so we'll work with them in these” areas, he said.

During the interview, Davies has also indicated that in 2022 they plan to organise a financial summit in the Balkans.

Another area in which we will work is that of finance in general, because part of the green agenda will be attracting investments in the region and certainly for us the region means two things. For us, the most important region is Kosovo, and beyond that is the Western Balkans. In order to execute and promote that possibility, we are working close to leading organisations in the world in finance, the national bank, respectively, or as is the OMFF, and Chairman David Marsh is the person I worked with in Berlin and London, and he is very excited to join us to organise a financial summit in the Balkans in 2022. We were going to do it this year, but because of our pandemic, we didn't know if it's wise to make people together. This is a very large area we're working on”, he said away.

Ministers of various ministries in Kosovo and businessmen representing different companies, thanks to this approach, will have the opportunity to go to Denmark and see some of the best practices in the energy sector.

Davies says the same practices can then adapt to Kosovo.

We're working close to the energy sector. We want to bring some of the best practices into solar energy and the extent of wind energy, but much wider scope for energy plans from fossil fuels. In this respect, what we've discussed with Government is that we are planning to send on mission some of the Kosovo ministers and important businesses to Denmark, so that the ministers see the best practices and companies see these practices in Denmark, and adapt some of these technologies to Kosovo. This is one of the biggest events to be organised in 2022”, Davies said.

The chairman of the British Economic Ode in Kosovo has not left out even gender equality issues, where he said he intends to empower young women who are successful in business.

Another area I'm very proud of and I'd like to mention is that from the very beginning, I've been involved in gender equality issues in Denmark. Gender equality is something we've been engaged in since 2000-2001. Since then, how many qualified women have you seen on board? Not much. But today, gender equality is more in focus and since the beginning of the movement #metoo and so on, what we've achieved in Ode is that there's an advisory group for the role of women in business. What we're going to use this for is to empower young women, to think about the changes they can make. Women who have the ability to present themselves as models of what they've achieved, because the reason why we're engaged in gender equality is that we see that women and men have different skills and different ways of seeing things and the result they bring is positive”, Davies said.

During the interview, he spoke highly optimistic about the policies of the current government in Kosovo. According to him, some of the laws adopted in Kosovo are based on the EU's best practices.

However, he says British Oda shares concerns about the rule of law in Kosovo and the elimination of corruption. He has mentioned the IT sector, where, according to him, there are many talented young people in Kosovo who have proved they can compete in the world market.

Davies even says Kosovo can become the bridge between Britain and the Western Balkans.

There are other areas we are working on, and all of these will be included in our main strategy, which is Kosovo going great. We are very excited to use these opportunities we have today, to make changes, and to use Kosovo as the model of best practices, which can be taken by other countries in the region, to use the best practices we can bring to the market from Britain. We've already talked about the news sector, where we've promoted articles with things that might be of interest to our members, every week on the Web and we're going to keep doing it. We think that Kosovo has the potential to become a bridge between Britain and the Western Balkans, in many ways similar to how Denmark works, as a bridge between Western and northern Europe. We are excited about the potential of future opportunities, and it offers security to us that we seem to have policies similar to your government”, he said.

During the interview, Davies has also said that the departure of Great Britain from the European Union has offered great trade opportunities for Kosovo companies, which will be treated the same as companies within the EU.

We remember that this year, Britain's Economic Oda in Kosovo, has signed memorandums of understanding with the Albanian Diaspore Business Network and the Kosovo Insurance Bureau.

The chairman of Oda at the end indicated that they are currently at the conclusion of a memorandum with the U NICEF and hopes there will be similar international organisations