Few lines about the City Development Agency of Banja Luka city - CIDEA.

City Development Agency of Banja Luka (hereafter the CIDEA, CIDEA is abbreviated name of the Agency) was founded by Decision of Assembly of the city of Banja Luka (Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and it has the status of the juristic person: administrative, non profit organization. The CIDEA is the link between the city administration and other stakeholders participating in the local development. Our vision is to become the leading institution for the development of the city of Banja Luka, primarily in the area of capacity development and creating favorable climate for the development of the economy. The CIDEA has its mission to provide support to existing and potential small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs to encourage their development and contribute to the growth of gross domestic product and create new jobs. The main aims of the CIDEA activities are the following: coordinated planning and implementation of development projects, developed sector of entrepreneurship and growth of SMEs, educated and competitive workforce and developed information system for monitoring the development and influence the results of implemented projects. The main activities that the CIDEA has been performing are focused on identification and implementation of development projects that are facilitating and accelerating development of entrepreneurship and have positive impact on employment rate in the city as well as development of the other projects assigned by the City. Particular attention is given to the projects identified in the Development Strategy of Banja Luka City. In the previous years, the CIDEA also drafted studies and planning documents number of strategic documents related to rural development and SME development strategy. This shows the CIDEA’s strong commitment to the projects that are in compliance with approved strategic documents. Our philosophy is to address beneficiaries’ real problems in each project and find solutions --- give best practice examples but not copy and do academic exercises! We customize our activities and approach to fit beneficiaries’ specific needs. We give particular attention to the environment protection and gender equality, then tradition and heritage protection in our development projects. We constantly insist to connect research and development/Innovation with the SME development and we make education become component of every single project. We strongly support sustainable development of local communities and help vulnerable groups to have better life. Strengthening of networking of stakeholders, identification and development of joint actions, use of best practice methods and human resource development are our main methods used to achieve better results and common benefit for all citizens. All above mentioned issues are necessary to have in mind in order to create a strong partnership, ownership of the results and ensure active participation of beneficiaries and partners. We do have developed strong partnership relations with the number of international organizations, foreign public institutions and agencies. We are working on development and implementation of joint projects with clearly defined benefit for our clients at local level but also with very precise defined impact on global level. Last but not least, since established the Agency has been working on its capacity building. Particular attention is given to the development of sector for international cooperation. Recently, very qualified staff with several years of relevant experience gained working with the EU funded projects has been employed.