A two-day summit of southeastern business leaders, addressing improvement of the business dialogue in the region and removal of obstacles to better cooperation, was closed in Arandjelovac, central Serbia, on Friday.

The summit dubbed 'Agreement for New Age' gathered over 100 businessmen, representatives of international financial institutions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank.

The second day of the summit focused on panels on infrastructure as a precondition of the economic growth, the energy agenda of the region and partnerships in new markets.

Good infrastructure is a precondition to speedier development of the southeast European countries. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the level of investments in infrastructure projects so that regional economies could become more competent and efficient and successfully integrate into the EU market, it was underlined in the panel.

The participants of the summit agreed that the investments in infrastructure, along with engagement of domestic companies, should be one of the responses to the economic crisis. Moreover, one of the conclusions of the panel on infrastructure was that a feasibility study should be drafted on possible joint infrastructure projects.

The first day of the summit concluded that the only way for the regional countries to respond to the challenges of the world crisis is to have closer ties and business cooperation, joint investments by Slovenian, Serbian and Croatian companies and penetration into third markets, increase in economic growth in the southeastern European countries and continuation of the EU integration process.

According to Serbian President Boris Tadic, who attended the first day of the summit, the role of policy is to create conditions for business and cooperation.