In their discussions, the Minister of Economic Development and Technology, Metod Dragonja, and Director General of UNIDO Li Yong, particularly focused on further strengthening cooperation between Slovenia and UNIDO, which is based on project work. Slovenia seeks to include as many Slovenian companies as possible (the companies that have expressed interest and can participate with any type of contribution, equipment, technology or know-how) in the UNIDO development companies. This also promotes export activity of Slovenia companies in specific regions and in specific business sectors.
Minister Dragonja highlighted active cooperation with UNIDO and said that voluntary contributions from Slovenia in the last few years had been rather large and significant for some of our companies that were directly involved in the projects. Therefore, Slovenia will continue to assist specific sectors of the industry and business via UNIDO.
Director General Li Yong stressed that Slovenia was a major partner of UNIDO, and is at the top of member countries according to the share of funds per capita. “The main goal of UNIDO in my term, which began last autumn, is to accept the challenges of industrialisation in under- and undeveloped countries. Industrialisation should become the backbone of changing economies. At UNIDO, there will be a new beginning, and it will increase its efficiency and performance to become the main specialised and executive agencies of the United Nations. UNIDO possesses the organisational and staff competences to carry this out, and in this respect, we seek to achieve the best possible interaction with donor countries,” said Li Yong.
2nd regional international conference on industrial and technological parks
Today, the second regional international conference on industrial and technological parks, organised jointly by UNIDO and the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, began in Ljubljana. The purpose of the international conference is to speed up inclusive and sustainable local economic and industrial development in South-East Europe and Central Asia. The conference is attended by representative from SE Europe and central Asia.
At the opening of the Janko Burgar, State Secretary at the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, said: “Slovenia participated at the first international conference in Baku. Therefore, we are very content that the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology is actively involved in organising the second conference here in Ljubljana. The conference is an opportunity to promote local industrial development and cooperation, and stresses the significance of the support environment for innovation, particularly for emerging companies and the companies in the early stages of development. I am proud that our ministry is so closely involved in and directly responsible for cooperation with UNIDO, which will remain the case in the future.”
In his opening speech, the Director General of UNIDO, Li Yong, thanked the Slovenian Government, and the economic and foreign ministries for cooperation in organising the conference, whose objective is to contribute to the better understanding of the role of industrial and technological parks in economic diversification and creating jobs in the current global situation. “It has become completely clear that we need a new development approach that sees society, the economy, industry and the environment as a whole, and is based on major amendments to production and consumption methods,” said Li Yong.