While taking care of the epidemic situation, we are going to create conditions for the beginning of tourism season and better valorization of our tourist potential .The country is ready and it has done all it could: we defended opurselves from the virus, we protected our citizens and opened borders to all countries with similar coronavirus risk profile. Right now, Montenegro has its borders open to 131 countries, said today Mr Duško Marković, in conversation “Openly with the Prime Minister”, traditionally organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Montenegro.
U.S Ambassador to Montenegro, Mrs Judy Rising Reinke, also took part in the virtual event. She expressed her congratulations and appreciation to the PM for the exceptional manner in which his Government had handled the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the first COVID-19-free country in Europe, Montenegro has clearly demonstrated leadership and responsible governance in time of crisis”, Ambassador said.
She reminded that AmCham had presented the findings of its Business Climate Report at last year’s event.
“On that day, we discussed many positive trends, as well as few areas of improvement. From my personal discussions with the PM I can test that he and the Government of Montenegro are tackling numerous challenges that have been identified and they have been initiating a number of important projects which will bring tremendous benefit to the country of Montenegro. Now even bigger challenges lie ahead that require collective energy, creativity and diligence. As we’ve heard many times over the past few months “Zajedno smo jači” (We are stronger together)”,Mrs Rising Reinke said.
Asked about the forthcoming tourism season, Mr Marković said that the whole situation was very concerning.
“Countries are still keeping their borders closed. There’s no coordinated and harmonized approach within the EU. Therefore, the result Montenegro has as the first and the only country without coronavirus doesn’t give us hope that tourism will have any chances this year. But we are not going to give up”, Mr Marković said.
He pointed out that the third package of measures contained different models.
Digital transformation – top priority
Mr Marković said that the past period had shown that many jobs could be done online and at home and that digital transformation was top priority at this moment.
“The scourge that hit us has shown us that we must change our traditional habits, develop our society, render decisions faster without spending too much time and money and digital transformation really is top priority at the moment”, PM said.
In that context, PM reminded of some of the cases in which coronavirus pandemic had accelerated some digitization processes and contributed to changing habits and considering better our own abilities.
There has been skepticism, but we have seen that online teaching was organized in a high-quality manner.
“The objective has been achieved. Students were in contact with their teachers and this process raised the level of information and digital education and I will believe we will have powerful benefits from it in the future”, Mr Marković said.
He touched on some particular achievements and reminded that digitization in medicine had been present for ten years and that tele-medicine project had been functioning in three hospitals.
Development of the Digital Transformation Strategy is crucial this year
Prime Minister that the most important step in the area of digitization was adoption of the Digital Transformation Strategy.
“I agree that we should form advisory body which would be tasked with implementing the Strategy”, Mr Marković said.
Support for the national IT sector
PM said that IT industry in Montenegro wasn’t developed enough in Montenegro.
“Within the proposal for the third package of measures, Ministry of Science has focused more on enhancing and supporting this industry. I believe we are going to find mechanisms for faster development of IT industry”, Mr Marković said.
