Possible strategic cooperation between “Mercedes” and FAP factory – Dinkic and Paraskevaides meet

Delegation of “Mercedes” company, together with General Manager of this company for Serbia and Montenegro, Stavros Paraskevaides, have met on May, 7th, 2008, with the Minister of economy and regional development, Mladjan Dinkic, about possible investments of Mercedes in Serbia.

They have discussed the possibility of coming in with a Greenfield investment, which means to build a new car factory, or to make a strategic cooperation between Mercedes and FAP factory from Priboj, in manufacture of trucks, it was announced in the Ministry.

Having in mind long year cooperation between Mercedes and FAP, Dinkic suggested to their delegation to make a new strategic partnership with FAP, by the model of joint investing, as agreed between Zastava and Fiat.

He pointed out that conditions which Serbia is ready to offer to world companies for investing in automobile industry are much more favorable than the ones offered by Romania, Hungary, Czech and Poland, and he expressed his belief that Serbia will become in the coming period a center of automobile industry of Southeastern Europe.

Dinkic talked about attractive encouragements, which our country is ready to offer to world car manufacturers for construction of plants on the territory of Serbia.

One of stimulation factors is that Serbia is ready to provide free land equipped with necessary communal infrastructure and with a status of free customs zone, for construction of the new car factory.

This also includes liberation from profit tax, from obligations of local taxes and fees in the period of 10 years, as well as financial encouragement of the state in the amount of 25% from investment value bigger than 200 mil EUR, and employment of more than 1000 workers.