“Macroeconomic stability, financial consolidation achieved” Prime Minister Ana Brnabic met in Sofia on Wednesday with Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank Kristalina Georgieva. The meeting came on the eve of the international conference “Stronger Regional Integration in the Balkans,” the Serbian government announced. Brnabic and Georgieva “agreed that Serbia has achieved macroeconomic stability and financial consolidation in the past few years owing to comprehensive economic reforms that are consistently being implemented.” These results were verified by progress on the World Bank’s Doing Business List, where out of 190 countries Serbia ranked 43rd, which is why the World Bank has declared Serbia the reform leader in South East Europe. The meeting focused primarily on the projects of the World Bank in Serbia relating to the fields of infrastructure, energy, health, education, public administration reform, development of the financial sector and small and medium-sized enterprises, the government said. Brnabic informed Georgieva about progress in implementing World Bank’s Program “Strategic Framework for Partnership for the period 2016-2020”, focusing, among other things, on fiscal sustainability, financial and macroeconomic stability and strengthening of institutional capacity. Brnabic and Georgieva also discussed cooperation in the Western Balkans region and the prime minister pointed out that this cooperation is one of the main priorities of the Serbian government. She added that Serbia is committed to becoming stronger because building a common economic area in the Western Balkans region will increase economic growth, reduce unemployment and improve the standard of living of all citizens of the region. When it comes to cooperation between Serbia and Bulgaria, the prime minister pointed out that the construction of the gas pipeline between the two countries is one of the priority projects in the field of energy, whose realization provides for diversification of directions and sources of supply. She explained that this will improve the security of supply of Serbia, Bulgaria and the region as a whole. Serbia attaches great importance to improving cooperation with Bulgaria in the development of road and railway infrastructure, especially the construction of the Nis-Sofia motorway, as part of Corridor 10, and the reconstruction and modernization of the Nis- Dimitrovgrad railroad. Brnabic is on a two-day working visit to Bulgaria, where she also met with Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Source: B92.