"Mačva in flowers"
From a family farm to a flower exporter
"We would never have achieved all this on our own. The Development Fund of Serbia granted us a loan at a right moment, when we needed finances the most, and we could not obtain them elsewhere”, says Slobodan Radovanović, Director of the Eol Partnership Company.
Mačva is one of the wealthiest regions of Serbia and Europe when it comes to geothermal water springs. Better usage of these and many other natural potentials of our country would contribute to a faster achievement of main goals of the Poverty Reduction Strategy: more balanced regional development of the country, increased employment and better global competitiveness of economy. The Development Fund of the Republic of Serbia operates in line with these objectives, whose main activity is to approve of loans for programmes in the field of economic and regional development.
With the help of the Development Fund loan, the Eol Partnership Company for Producing Pot Flowers from Ivanjica initiated a new production line in Dublje near Šabac in 2002. Eol has so far used two Development Fund loans. In 2002, Eol took a loan amounting to CSD 10 million and repaid it in 2004, and CSD 6.4 million was taken in 2003, which is repaid duly on a three-month basis.
"The main goals of coming to Mačva was to use geothermal waters, that the region abounds in, with the aim of facility heating. In this way 70% of saving is achieved, at the same time using an ecological, limitless and naturally renewable source of energy", says Slobodan Radovanović |
Thirty years of family farm experience reached its peak with raising an automated glasshouse for flower breeding at the 5000 m2 area–one of the state-of-the-art facilities of this kind in Serbia. The Netherlands Government and the Dutch Institute for Agricultural Development and Improvement financed the equipment for building the glasshouse, computer systems and irrigation systems, and the Ministry of Mining and Energy approved of the land for geothermal water research and issued exploitation permit for using thermal potentials of geothermal waters – first of the kind in the Republic of Serbia.
Using hot water springs for heating the glasshouse enables continued production during the entire year with the minimum of energy costs. At the same time, this is ecologically clean production: water that leaves the system is clean; it does not pollute the environment, and may be used for irrigation or other forms of secondary exploitation. Although the inhabitants of Dublje at first showed distrust in the activity, soon they got involved in the production themselves. Namely, in addition to three permanently employed workers, Eol employs 7-10 seasonal workers, mostly inhabitants of Dublje. These are younger persons without any special work qualifications, which usually have difficulties in finding their first employment due to the lack of working experience. In this way more than 40 persons got employed in the previous four years. Today Eol produces more than a million pot plants a year (mostly chrysanthemums, geraniums, petunias, salvias, celosias and dahlias), and in addition to the Serbian market, it maintains good cooperation with distributors (flower shops and chains of retail facilities) from Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to regular loan repayment to the Development Fund, the main goal of Eol is to continue to use favourable natural conditions in Mačva through expanding production land, and consequently expansion to the markets of countries in the region.
The Development Fund of the Republic of Serbia provides loans on most favourable terms for economic and regional development programmes, for stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises, for stimulating the development of production artisanship and service industry, and for stimulating competitiveness and liquidity of domestic economy. In this way Poverty Reduction Strategy recommendations are directly implemented.
Partners in PRS Implementation 
