{"id":3167465,"date":"2023-03-31T14:36:18","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T14:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webalkans.eu\/boosting-digital-development-of-the-western-balkans\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T15:27:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:27:36","slug":"boosting-digital-development-of-the-western-balkans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webalkans.eu\/en\/boosting-digital-development-of-the-western-balkans\/","title":{"rendered":"Boosting digital development of the Western Balkans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A donor coordination meeting regarding the Western Balkans Common Regional Market and the Regional Digital Area was conducted as part of the Investing in Digitalization in the Western Balkans conference on March 28 in Sarajevo. The Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the European Investment Bank (EIB) jointly organised the event, which was attended by regional ministers responsible for the digital sector, other high-ranking government officials, local and international experts in digital projects, significant donors, international financial institutions, and Western Balkan business representatives.<\/p>\n&nbsp;\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While sharing key success stories of digitalisation in the Western Balkans, they agreed on the importance of boosting successful digitalisation models in the area of soft and hard infrastructure in the private and public sector. Addressing infrastructural and financial gaps in the digital infrastructure sector, creating a Regional Digital Area and digital ecosystems, and increasing financing opportunities for the digitalisation of small businesses were identified as the key priorities going forward.<\/p>\n&nbsp;\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the first part of the conference, the EBRD and the EIB presented selected investment projects and initiatives in the area of digital transformation. To date, the EBRD has invested over \u20ac562\u00a0million in the information technologies and communications sectors of the six Western Balkans economies. Separately, the EBRD is now developing specialised financing programmes for digitalisation, the first of which \u2014 the \u20ac40\u00a0million GoDigital credit line in partnership with the European Union \u2014 was launched last year in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Technical cooperation included single access points for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Albania and Montenegro. Hundreds of small businesses received advisory services on digitalisation.<\/p>\n&nbsp;\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since 2020 alone, the EIB has provided \u20ac200\u00a0million for digital projects in the Western Balkans to help companies digitalise, improve the capacity, coverage and quality of the 4G network and roll out 5G mobile services, and increase digital capacities and skills in over 1\u00a0500 schools. In 2022, our investments helped boost new digital business models, connect 4\u00a0million households to fibre broadband and enable 6.6\u00a0million subscriptions for 5G services globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A donor coordination meeting regarding the Western Balkans Common Regional Market and the Regional Digital Area was conducted as part of the Investing in Digitalization in the Western Balkans conference on March 28 in Sarajevo. The Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the European Investment Bank (EIB) jointly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3167466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"area-of-cooperation":[284],"country":[245,246,247,248,249,250],"opportunity-type":[],"class_list":["post-3167465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","area-of-cooperation-connectivity","country-albania","country-bosnia-and-herzegovina","country-kosovo","country-montenegro","country-north-macedonia","country-serbia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Boosting digital development of the Western Balkans - WeBalkans<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/webalkans.eu\/en\/boosting-digital-development-of-the-western-balkans\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Boosting digital development of the Western Balkans - WeBalkans\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A donor coordination meeting regarding the Western Balkans Common Regional Market and the Regional Digital Area was conducted as part of the Investing in Digitalization in the Western Balkans conference on March 28 in Sarajevo. 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