Employment seen as key target in region

TIRANA, Oct. 1 – There is a plan of coordinated work of the governments in the Western Balkans on how to create one million new jobs until 2020, according to experts of the Regional Cooperation Council Secretariat who held in Tirana a series of presentations of the first draft of the South East Europe 2020 strategy for employment in the region.
The document is being prepared in close consultation with governments and initiatives from South East Europe.
The main pledge of Albania’s new Socialist-led coalition was to create 300,000 new jobs during the next four years they are in power.
The eventwas the last of sevenworkshops the RCChas organized in the Western Balkan region in a one-month period, gathering hundreds of participants as part of the outreach effort on the SEE 2020 strategy.
“The most important goals of the strategy to be reached by 2020 include: employment growth, boost of total SEE trade in goods and services from 94 to 210 billion euro, and the rise of the region’s GDP from 36 percent to 44 percent of the EU average,” said Sanjin Arifagic, senior expert in charge of the project.
“We also want tosee the increase of overall annual FDI inflows to the region by at least 160 percent and additional 300,000 highly educated people on the job market, with a realistic perspective to get decent jobs.”
Achieving these targets should contribute to generating1 million new jobs in South East Europe by 2020. To make this happen, innovation, skills and trade must be upgraded and national governments will need to be far more efficient than they are nowadays.