On 3rd June, Honorary ICPE Council President Academician Dr. Anton Vratuša and DG, ICPE, Dr. Anand Asthana, along with Mr. Nenad Stankovic, ICPE representative in Vienna met Dr. Erhard Busek, Coordinator of the South-Eastern Cooperative Initiative (SECI) and Chairman of the Institute for Danube Region and Central Europe and discussed his ideas about potential cooperation between ICPE and Dr. Busek’s Institute. In addition, Dr. Vratuša presented project on Integrated Management of Protected Areas.
Dr. Busek graciously accepted invitation of ICPE to deliver a public lecture at ICPE in Ljubljana which could be jointly organized with the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
In the meeting between DG, ICPE and top officials of UNIDO areas of cooperation between the two institutions were identified. DG, ICPE was invited to attend Vienna Energy Forum. A meeting with Strategic Research wing will be organized next week.
On 5th June 2015, DG, ICPE met Mr. Rachid Bencherif, Head, Grants Unit, was held at 11:00 in premises of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID). The meeting was also attended by ICPE representative in Vienna Mr. Nenad Stankovic and Ms. Souhad Khriesat, Technical Assistant Officer, Grants Unit, OFID.
Mr. Bencherif presented OFID mission and portfolio. He stressed that OFID’s main mission is to decrease poverty in the low income countries and LDCs. From September this year OFID will be focused on sustainable development goals which should help poor countries to improve their economies and quality of lives for their citizens. OFID has pretty wide portfolio which could be grouped in 6 fields including technical assistance, HIV/AIDS program, emergency situations, research, Palestine portfolio special program and most importantly, Energy poverty reduction. Besides specific countries and regional initiatives, OFID supports south-south and north-south cooperation.
Dr. Asthana explained his vision for ICPE and described plans for future activities. Dr. Asthana stressed cooperation with UNIDO and OFID as one of ICPE’s priorities. With their support ICPE has ambition to become knowledge hub and training center for ICPE member states as well as other countries which wish to joins ICPE family. Mr. Bencherif stressed the need to assess the impact of future training activities of ICPE in the countries to which the participants belong. Mr. Bencheriff appreciated ICPE’s intention of improving its quarterly journal Public Enterprise and the idea of the forthcoming special issue on Performance Measurement and suggested a special issue on PPP in water sector.
OFID agreed to include ICPE in its list of Cooperating Partners.
