COMPANIES seeking trading opportunities in the Czech Republic would do
well to note the following names, Radek Vetecnik, deputy director of the
Brno department of economic development, and Petr Bajer, managing
director of the Brno Chamber of Commerce.
Both men are in Glasgow as part of the European Ouverture project
which aims to foster links between regional and municipal authorities in
the EC and their counterparts in the emerging economies of central
Europe.
Mr Vetecnik and Mr Bajer are here to learn from the various economic
development agencies in Strathclyde such as the LECs, regional and
district councils, Scottish Enterprise and Locate in Scotland, the
Scottish Council Development and Industry, the banks and the chambers of
commerce.
According to SBD senior international trade adviser Evelyn McGow, this
has been particularly valuable because there are no economic support
agencies in the Czech Republic outside of the regional chambers of
commerce.
The man in charge of the operation at SBD, principal international
trade adviser Kenneth Clark, said Strathclyde was an excellent example
for central Europe as it contained all the elements of economic
regeneration in the wake of the decline of its heavy industrial bases.
The Czech business leaders are seeing the region, warts and all.
They are particularly interested in property values and rental
assessments as this sector is often the quickest route to the generation
of foreign currency through hotels and commercial and retailing
developments. Of the 1477 units privatised last year in the Southern
Moravia region 784 were retail outlets.
However, their presence here will prove valuable to companies seeking
to develop in central Europe. Strathclyde Business Development, the
economic arm of the regional council, which is operating the Ouverture
programme in conjunction with an EC Priority One area, in this case
Waterford Chamber of Commerce, is to take a number of companies to a
major engineering exhibition in Brno in September.
Brno, the second-largest city to Prague in the Czech Republic, is
sufficiently distant from the capital to have enabled it to forge an
independent economic role with links to Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and
Poland.
In the new private sector the most dynamic growth rate has been in
business partnerships of which most (47%) are based in Brno.
Prevailing industries in the surrounding region are mechanical
engineering, metal-working, textiles, electronics, food and building
materials. However, many of the factory units in Brno have obsolete
equipment with all the corresponding environmental problems so the area
is keen to see western investment in the form of technology as an
added-value element.
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