Association for Foreign Investment

2005/03/24, Awards announcement of the best suppliers in 2004

Minister of Industry & Trade Milan Urban handed out awards to the best Czech suppliers of multinational companies at the "Supplier of the Year 2004" awards ceremony held in Prague.
As part of the project of "Partnership to Support Foreign Direct Investment in the Czech Republic" these awards are given out by the Association for Foreign Investment - AFI in cooperation with CzechInvest in the following categories:

• Largest contracts concluded with CzechInvest's assistance
• Best company of the Czech Supplier Development Programme
• Company with the largest growth in the Czech Supplier Development Programme

"The opportunity that domestic companies have to work with multinational corporations is one of the biggest benefits of foreign direct investment, whose influx we intensively support," commented Minister of Industry & Trade Milan Urban, and added: "Linkage with the supply chains of multinational corporations represents an exceptional opportunity especially for small- and medium-sized Czech companies. But winning the trust of foreign investors is not easy and the Czech companies that work with them and that we are honouring tonight had to demonstrate not only outstanding quality of production but also flexibility in negotiations."

If a small company succeeds in winning a contract to supply any of the major companies operating on the European or world market it gets an excellent reference and often can secure sales of products for a number of years. "In the past thanks to the support of Czech suppliers we gained invaluable experience in doing business with small- and
medium-sized firms in the Czech Republic. For this reason we launched a whole host of new programmes in 2004 to support enterprise; starting next year we also want to honour those companies that submitted the best projects, for example, in the field of technological innovation and human resources," said Radomil Novák, Chief Executive Officer of CzechInvest.

An entirely new award called "Entrepreneurial Project of the Year" will be conferred under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry & Trade. Projects of Czech entrepreneurs, supported by programmes co-financed by EU funds, can receive awards in 2006, for example, in these categories:
Entrepreneurial project with greatest innovation potential
Entrepreneurial development project of the year
Supplier of the year
There will also be special awards for projects in the field of human resources development.