Improvement of administrative procedures, with the maximum application of digital solutions that would speed up many processes and a favorable tax framework are what should be the focus of the Government, if it wants to create new economic values and thus improve the business environment for domestic and foreign companies in Montenegro.
This was said in an interview for Vijesti by the founder and project manager of the company Five Group, Ivan Šoć, who recently received recognition from the Association of Managers (AMM).
I think that the next steps should be aimed at including information technology (IT) as a strategic branch of the economy and that the focus should be on creating such a business environment that would primarily provide domestic companies with all the privileges and ease of doing business, but also attract foreign companies from these areas. In this way, a strong ecosystem would be built over time – said Šoć, winner of the award for one of the managers of the year.
According to him, the Five Group is a young Montenegrin brand, which through its activities and business endeavors to unite different segments. The main focus is on science and the innovative sector, connected with the IT industry. There are also the fields of gaming, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence.
When asked how all these areas are connected, Šoć states that today IT is heavily woven into all branches of a society.
So we can consider it as a link between these branches, and all of them individually form the basis of modern society, which should primarily aim to improve economic and life parameters. If we take into account the applicability of artificial intelligence in medicine, we are already talking about the enormous impact of this technology on society, and it is only one segment.
This is, for example, one field that is currently in our research focus. On the other hand, virtual and augmented reality have a serious application in the field of various trainings in, for example, the military industry, which are only one factor, and whose spectrum is too wide to single out something in particular – said Šoć.
Speaking about Montenegro, he stated that perhaps the shortcoming of our society when we talk about IT is that it is not sufficiently present in everyday life, that is, to the extent that it could be by applying some existing solutions that we have, for example, at the EU level.
This category includes various services that would facilitate some administrative procedures. However, here I have to refer to one important item, which I think is often left out in discussions that focus on digitization. The very development and digitization of a society, especially if we are talking in an administrative context, must be fully accompanied by the equal development of cyber security – he said.
As he said, we can observe this through a concrete example of last year’s hacker attack.
Perhaps we can even say that we were “lucky in an accident”, that the state administration did not rely exclusively on digitized tools, so it was possible to switch to more “traditional” functioning relatively quickly. The bottom line is that if we want to fully rely on digital services, we must take into account all accompanying factors when creating them, as well as a whole series of elements such as backup systems.
Also, we must take into account the high degree of protection of the data itself, so that even if a hacker intrusion occurs in the system, from which no matter how developed a country you are, there is no complete protection, you have procedures that could ensure data protection to the greatest extent in such and similar situations. Of course, the entire digitization process must be accompanied by education, because no matter how much they protect the system, the human factor is always present – he stated.
Speaking about how one can contribute to the growth of the IT market in our country, Šoć said that one of the directions of the social movement represented by the Five group is aimed at the fact that our society can rely on these branches in the economic sense tomorrow, especially through the export of IT a favor.
In this way, a country like Montenegro can get a significant part of its finances from the foreign market, which increases the business standards of domestic companies. The great advantage of this branch is that for the development of products, which in this case is software, intended for the global market, we are not talking about classic production that would require large material investments as in the case of other export-oriented branches.
To simplify the comparison – in order to produce one glass cup, a whole process is needed, from the procurement of glass as raw material, processing, packaging, etc., to distribution, logistics and transportation, so that the product reaches the end customer. When we talk about software, that process does not require any raw materials, and the distribution is reduced to “a couple of clicks” and to the most distant points – points out Šoć.
He believes that there are several ways and modalities to improve the business environment, which could result in a very accelerated growth of these branches of the economy. I think that the next steps should be aimed at including IT as a strategic branch of the economy and that the focus should be on creating such a business environment that would primarily provide domestic companies with all the privileges and ease of doing business, but also attract foreign companies from these areas. In this way, a strong ecosystem would be built over time – he added.
When asked how the Government can further facilitate business and where he sees room for improvement, Šoć answers:
As we are currently in communication with several companies from the global market, and we are talking with some of them precisely on the subject of their arrival in Montenegro, while some are present but still feeling the ground, I would use their experience to answer this question. For such companies, those items related to tax policies are crucial. Also, an important factor is the level of digitization and the administration of the host country.
This is exactly where I would look for an answer to the question of how to facilitate business, both for domestic businessmen and for foreign companies. The improvement of administrative procedures, with the maximum application of digital solutions that would speed up many processes and a favorable tax framework are what should be the focus, if we want to create new economic values.
