The future of trade from different viewpoints

The first event of the year as part of the activities of the Business Intelligence Institute, the Business Diplomatic breakfast was held at the Metropol Hotel. This event had a topic “The Future of Trade” and was attended by over 60 top managers, company owners and CEOs, as well as 20 economic diplomats. The importance of the topic we wanted to cover this time is reflected in numerous changes in this field, both from the aspect of multipolarity with several economic centers of power, and from the aspect of e-commerce and artificial intelligence.

Aleksandar Plavšin, director of the Business Intelligence Institute, and Naim Leo Beshiri, executive director of the Institute for European Affairs, gave a short welcome address at this year’s business and diplomatic breakfast.

Distinguished panelists were H.E. Ilhan Sajgili, Ambassador of the Republic of Türkiye to Serbia, H.E. Edward Ferguson, Ambassador of the United Kingdom in Serbia, Prof. Dr. Slobodan Aćimović, full  professor of the Faculty of Economics, Ivan Antonijević, Chief Marketplace Officer of the company Ananas and Aleksandar Pavlović, Senior Business Development Manager of the BE-terna company. This interesting business panel was moderated by Željko Veljković, a journalist.

Today, our panelists discussed and answered questions from different angles regarding changes in trade flows and geopolitics, the increasing influence of technology in logistics, market regionalization, opportunities for increasing trade cooperation and investments, the implementation of artificial intelligence in the management of transport and logistics in Serbia or the region, automation and optimization of warehouses, the increasing growth and importance of online sales in Serbia and trends and many other interesting topics.

With the ambassadors of the United Kingdom and Turkey in Serbia, we talked about the potential of trade cooperation and investments, infrastructure projects on which these two countries cooperate in Serbia, as well as what are the new products and sectors where Serbia can increase its participation in trade exchange with these two countries.

After the end of the panel, the guests and panelists continued the exchange of opinions and discussions on the possibilities of cooperation over breakfast.

We would like to thank to our partners: ProCredit Bank, Ananas and Be-terna companies, Hotel Metropol for their support to that this year’s business diplomatic breakfast be even more successful, as well as all the guests who responded to our invitation and attended the business panel.