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.