EU PROGRES

When the Bojnik Public Utility Company (PUC) “Jedinstvo” approved the Decision on Market Rules and the Decision on Provision and Use of Market Stands at the end of February 2013, they became the first PUC in this Jablanica town to introduce good governance principles into its work.

“Discussions with the Bojnik officials on the good governance part of the “Strengthening Institutional and Infrastructure Capacity of the Bojnik Green Market” project began almost immediately after the proposal was approved. At the time, the Green Market did not have adequate related regulatory framework”, said Dragan Mladenović, the EU PROGRES Good Governance Component Manager. “The adopted documents address issues such as the procedures and pricing for renting the Market stalls, internal organizations of the Market, internal pricing policy and other operational matters”, he added.

The new buildings of the dairy market and market administration in Bojnik, built with the European Union and the Swiss Government support through European Partnership with Municipalities Programme – EU PROGRES, were opened in October 2012 by Jean-Luc Oesch, the Swiss Embassy Deputy Head of Mission in Serbia and Ivan Stojanović, the Mayor of Bojnik. This South Serbian municipality thus received its first planned market facility for the sale of dairy products.

The project, worth 84,350 Euros, was one of the priority projects in the Bojnik Development Strategy as it was expected to support farming development in this part of the Jablanica District. The main farming activities include cattle breeding, fruit and vegetable production, because of favourable climate. Around 100 stalls at the green market, which was renovated in 2008 with the European Union support, are used mainly for the sale of fruit and vegetables. Due to lack of appropriate conditions, milk was sold in local dairy shops, while there were hardly any dairy products in the market offer. This affected satisfaction of buyers, but also the producers because of low purchase prices.

 “As a result of the lack of facilities for selling dairy products the milk producers did not make dairy products, but they sold milk as raw material to surrounding dairies. This dairy market will constitute not only a place for the sale of products but will also create preconditions to raise the quality and quantity of dairy products, which will affect the increase in livestock and consequently development of farming in the municipality of Bojnik,” said Ivan Stojanović, Mayor of Bojnik.

With the EU PROGRES good governance intervention, accountability and transparency in managing the Market will be significantly increased.