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SARAJEVO, October 12 (FENA) - The United Nations Development Program in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNDP BiH), with support of Sweden, organized the SDG Business Week, a week during which the Sustainable Development Goals were promoted, with a special focus on recovery, leadership and innovation.
SDG Business Week 2020, held from October 5 to 9, for the second year in a row gathered hundreds of participants, as well as eminent guest lecturers from around the world. The characteristic of this year's Business Week of Sustainable Development is that most of the events, except for the award ceremony for Business Leaders of Sustainable Development, which was held on October 6 at the International Center for Children and Youth Novo Sarajevo, were organized online.
This year's SDG Business Week was officially opened with the online conference "Digital Transformation for Sustainable Economy", which presented the European Digital Strategy (Single Digital Market), as well as specific examples of policies / mechanisms used in EU countries to support this type of transition to the digital economy. In addition, good solutions in the field of digital transformation in BiH were presented. The Ambassador of Sweden to BiH Johanna Strömquist and the UNDP Resident Representative in BiH Steliana Nedera opened the conference.
The conference outlined ways to integrate expertise into digitization processes, including data analytics, application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence and machine learning, and other technologies that offer corporations valuable ways to improve their competitiveness.
“With its relatively good communication and internet infrastructure and fast-growing IT sector, Bosnia and Herzegovina is in a unique position to use digitalization for sustainable economic growth. The COVID-19 pandemic only further emphasized the need for accelerated digital transformation in all sectors, including the private sector,” said Nedera at the opening of SDG Business Week.
Eminent lecturers from the EU DG Connect, Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, Chamber of Commerce and Trade of Greta Duchy of Luxembourg, Center for Digital Transformation of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, Tetrapak and others participated in the event organized in partnership with the BiH Foreign Trade Chamber, and in cooperation with UNDP Accelerator Lab, D4D and EU4Business.
On the second day of SDG Business Week 2020, the SDG Business Pioneers Award ceremony was held, which is a kind of final event of the annual competition for business leaders for 2020. This award recognizes and emphasizes the efforts of private sector companies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in BiH and motivates new entrants in the sector to incorporate SDGs into their business models. This year's awards were given in the categories "People" and "Resources and Environment", and the overall winner for Bosnia and Herzegovina was announced.
Winners in the field of "People" category: in the category of micro-companies, Stitch 22 Sarajevo was selected as the SDG Business Pioneer, while in the category of small companies the winner was Unija MF Sarajevo. In the category of medium enterprises, Ministry of Programming Sarajevo took the winner title, while in the category of large companies the SDG Business Pioneer in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2020 is Lanaco Banja Luka.
In the category of micro-companies under the theme "Resources and Environment", the company Turboservis B-H Sarajevo was declared the winner; while in the same theme, but in the category of small enterprises, the title went to the company Jaffa-Komerc Blagaj. In the categories of medium and large enterprises, the trophy was awarded to the cement factory 'Tvornica cementa' Kakanj (medium enterprise) and Coca-Cola HBC B-H Sarajevo (large enterprise).
The Kakanj cement factory, a company that contributed to the promotion of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the private sector in BiH, was declared the overall winner, i.e. the SDG Business Pioneer for 2020.
The fourth day of SDG Business Week was marked by a very interesting event during which companies participating in the SDG Accelerator for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) program presented their business ideas in front of a panel of potential investors.
The Sustainable Development Business Week concluded on October 9 when a panel was held on the role of entrepreneurial universities in creating a new generation of entrepreneurs and intraentrepreneurs: Vision 2030. Young innovators and business leaders discussed the future of business and the value of education in promotion of new entrepreneurs as well as support for intraentrepreneurs within companies. The event gathered young people through a competition on social networks which resulted in the selection of the most innovative student solution based on SDGs. For the best innovation will be awarded the Healthbyte team, whose video presentation received the greatest support.
The Sustainable Development Business Week 2020 was organized within the project "Support to Preparation for the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and Private Sector Involvement" implemented by UNDP in BiH and funded by Sweden, the UNDP BiH said.
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