October 11,  American Chamber of Commerce in Montenegro (AmCham Montenegro) organized Business Luncheon with the Minister of Economy, Ms. Dragica Sekulić. The event was attended by AmCham members, members of diplomatic corps, representatives of state and local administration as well as representatives of international organizations.

The president of AmCham Montenegro, Ms. Katarina Bulatović, recognized the cooperation with the Ministry of Economy within the Program Partnership for better Business environment, as an example of quality dialogue between the private and public sector. She noted that the Ministry of Economy had cooperated with the AmCham regarding the legislative act immensely important for the business environment- Corporate law.

We are delighted that majority of the comments we proposed for the draft of this Law, on behalf of AmCham, has been adopted, and we use this opportunity to emphasize the value  of the involvement of the business community has in drafting of bylaws which together with the previosly mentioned Law make up a whole, because they enable it to be applied properly ῞, Bulatović noted.

She added that the AmCham report regarding the business environment, introduced at the beginning of this year, stressed that the presence of grey economy in Montenegrin society is still worryingly high.

„We believe that the greater cooperation between the authorities is needed in order to establish an adequate model which would measure the levels of businesses involved in grey ecomony as well as a model which would efficinetly deal with illegal businesses.

Bulatović came to a conclusion „attracting new investments, as well as maintaining the existent, is only possible by improving the business environment ῞ and called all ministries for cooperation.

On behalf of the U.S. Embassy in Montenegro, H.E. Judy, Chargé d’affaires in the U.S. Embassy, addressed the guests and shared her belief that Montenegro can attract the greater number of investors by continuing to strengthen the rule of law and fight against corruption. She added that the business community needs to be actively involved in the shaping of regulative, by offering examples of good practice in order for legislative acts to have stimulative effect on the business environment.

Quality legislations enable businesses to focus on productivity and profitability, rather than wasting its resources on legislative acts which are unclear and have greater chances of being frequently amended, noted Kuo.

The Minister of Economy, Dragica Sekilić, responded to the questions relevant to the AmCham members as well as Montenegrin business community.

She looked back at the process of drafting the Corporate law and emphasized that the making of this legislation involved the efforts of representatives of business associations, as well as American Chamber of Commerce in Montenegro, whose comments and suggestions were mainly adopted in the draft of this Law.

By responding to the question asked by the AmCham business community, whether the Ministry of Labour had worked on the analysis of costs to which the companies will be exposed during the harmonization of the administrative structure with the new Corporate law, she noted that the Corporate law recognized the new model of management, that is, Two-tier management already established within the international organizations. Minister Sekulić explained that the legislation does not commit anyone to apply the Two-tier management, however, it only offers it as an option. She added that this legislation offers companies to have Supervisory board instead of the Executive board, meaning there the responsibility is on all the members of the board, rather than it being concentrated on only one executive. Apart from this, the Supervisory board would have the role of the Executive board.

When asked when is the new Draft law on the protection of competition to be expected and whether the Agency for protection of competition will have the power to penalize violations of competition, Sekulić said that the draft of amendments of existing Law has been done and that it is going to bring stricter measures which broaden the field of influence and strengthen the Agency, which is meant to be dealing with implementation and control of the state assistance in the future.

Minister Sekulić concluded that restrictive approach in the fight against the grey economy has to be followed by stimulative one, in order for the significant number of companies to practice legal businesses,  demanding multisector approach and greater communication by the authorities.