Brnabic: Singapore supports agreement between Serbia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

The agreement is of strategic importance

Singapore provides full support to Serbia's bid to sign an agreement on cooperation and friendship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which would be strategically important for our country, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said today.

Recommended

She stressed that she had extremely good meetings with President of Singapore Halimah Yacob and the acting prime minister - in the absence of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong - i.e. with Minister in charge of National Security Teo Chee Hean.

Brnabic said that Serbia has support to join ASEAN, as a country that is not located in Southeast Asia.

For that, she says, the consent of ASEAN member states is needed, but Singapore in her assessment is one of the most important ones.

The prime minister pointed out that, upon her return from Singapore, she will talk to President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic about restarting the procedure, because, according to her, this is strategically extremely important for us.

The prime minister of Serbia also stated that she hopes for visits of high-ranking government officials from Singapore to Belgrade.

She recalled that she had a good meeting a month ago with the prime minister of Singapore in Tokyo, and that a series of good talks continued now in Singapore, primarily on economic topics. Now Serbia also has an honorary consul in Singapore.

"Of course, we also spoke about technology, it's something that brings us together and we already have a good connection and are talking about when the return visit to Serbia will be, and that's something we'll have to work on in the coming period," the prime minister stressed.

Singapore has a slightly smaller population than Serbia, but a territory that is over 100 times smaller than that of our country. In this sense, the prime minister says that Singapore uses its resources very well.

"When you ask them what their biggest resource is, they say, we have no other resources except people, that's why our strategic decision since independence has been to invest in people. They have one of the best education systems. They started investing in new technologies 40 years ago," said Brnabic.

According to the prime minister, Serbia started this six years ago and "we already have good results."

She pointed out that it is a strategic decision of a country to invest in science, education, high technologies, to invest in its people and assessed that this is a recipe for success.

(Telegraf.rs)