“Oversight of Operations of Local Enterprises”, a two-day conference intended for female managers at the local level, has been opened today in the town of Vrdnik.
The event, attended by 19 women from 16 Serbian local self-government units, was opened by Ms. Dragana Potpara, State Secretary at the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, who highlighted the importance of introducing the female heads of local self-government units to the issues of local financial management, especially with regard to the operations of local enterprises. She noted the Ministry was mindful of the issue of gender equality at the local level, as witnessed by the signing of the Charter of Female Solidarity in March, which had been signed by 22 female mayors and presidents of municipalities. Ms. Potpara said this two-day event offered further proof of the Ministry’s aim to encourage and support them, because they were better at managing public finance, as well as to help them move closer towards equality with men with regard to supervision of operations of local enterprises.
“Although female general managers of local public enterprises are virtually non-existent, there are women at nearly all local self-government units on positions from which they are able to oversee the spending of budget funds and these are the positions they hold firmly, while our role is to support them in their endeavours”, Ms. Potpara said.
She reminded the participants of the conference of the recently adopted PAR Strategy, with its vision “ADMINISTRATION TAILORED TO ALL OF US”, which aims to create an administration that meets the needs of both citizens and businesses, i.e. to make public administration user-oriented.
Director of the RELOF 2 Project, Ms. Ana Jolović, said the Project she managed had immediately recognized the importance of networking of women at the local women and cooperated with the Ministry to elaborate on specific issues that could benefit local-level female managers in their work. She said she hoped the conference would bring about to an increase in their capacities, knowledge and competences, including those in the fields of managerial accountability, oversight of public enterprises and oversight of budget spending units, while also promoting their better mutual networking.
The Mayor of Užice, Ms. Jelena Raković Radivojević, said reform processes were equally important to all those who worked at the local level and noted they understood that only their full commitment would lead to progress across all levels of the society. She said she hoped projects such as this one would significantly improve the budgeting process, reporting to citizens and the operations of local tax administrations.
The two-day conference will address good governance and managerial accountability, corporate governance in the public sector and the benefits of digitalisation, the relationship between local self-government units and public enterprises, analysis of the state of play in Serbia, planning and reporting procedures, financial performance indicators, risk analysis and digitalisation of the process of oversight of public enterprises, the capacities of local self-government units for such oversight and subsequent steps in mutual cooperation.
The project “Reform of Local Finance in Serbia – Phase 2 (RELOF2), under which this two-day conference was organised, focuses on applying good governance principles to risk and performance management through comprehensive control and proper management of public finance in 33 selected local self-government units. It is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).
Photo gallery
