B U S I N E S S
In an attempt to nurture this relationship and encourage the involvement of the business sector in the responsible - and increasingly profitable - management of the environment, the REC has recently launched its newest program, the aptly named Business Information Service.
The BIS provides fee-driven, client-based research, information and support to businesses that are involved, or want to be involved, in the environmental marketplace in Central and Eastern Europe, estimated at over $2 billion in 1995 for the Visegrad Four alone. The service will provide information to environmental professionals about ideal management practices and technology which will encourage them to adopt sustainable industrial technologies.
This is all part of the REC's expanding vision, a movement to involve all Regional stakeholders, not just nongovernmental organizations, in the push to clean-up the environment and move along the path to sustainable development. But before this can happen, it is necessary to raise the awareness of environmental professionals in the business community.
The BIS is a tripartite program. An environmental query-and-answer service provides customers with tailored reports on a variety of topics, from environmental regulations and technology options to financing, market surveys and project opportunities. Vaccani, Zweig & Associates, a Swiss management consulting firm for some of Europe's major environmental companies, recently requested information on waste incineration plants and general waste management in Eastern Europe. What they got was a detailed, country-by-country report for Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. "It was high quality information which suited our needs," said Suejean Jost-Asato, a company spokesperson.
The service will host a series of workshops for the environmental business sector. These sessions will address regulatory and legislative changes that are driving the environmental marketplace.The BIS will also publish environmental business reference material, such as the REC's Directory of Central and Eastern European Environmental Businesses and the forthcoming environmental market survey of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic.
| PROFILE OF ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANIES | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PROFILE | HUNGARY | POLAND | SLOVAK REPUBLIC | CZECH REPUBLIC |
| Size (% < 25 full-time employees) |
71 | 60 | 66 | 66 |
| % of enterprises privately owned | 78 | 85 | 71 | 98 |
| Age of company (% < 5 years) |
60 | 50 | 67 | 65 |
| Combined gross revenues (million USD) |
40-62 | 110-220 | 22-31 | 40-53 |
| % of companies with < 10% income from foreign sources | 74 | 85 | 74 | 68 |
| Major sources of revenue | technical services | environmental products and technologies | technical services | environmental products and technologies |
"This is the first clear picture, a snapshot if you will, of how the environmental marketplace is developing in these four countries," says Emil Dzuray, project officer for the BIS.
Although the marketplace is different in each country, the survey revealed that in all four countries, the market is extremely young, with the vast majority of companies established after 1990. The companies were generally small - two-thirds employed less then 25 full-time employees and 29 percent employed less than six - and privatization seems to have moved quite quickly in the environmental business sector throughout the Region. The survey revealed that the percentage of those companies in private hands was 85 percent.
The survey also revealed there is very little international business being conducted. Hungary had the highest percentage of joint ventures at 25 percent, while the percentage hovered at around 15 percent for both the Czech and Slovak Republics, and plummeted to seven percent for Poland. In both Hungary and Slovakia, 74 percent of the companies said they received less than 10 percent of their income from foreign sources, while in Poland and the Czech Republic the figures were 81 percent and 68 percent respectively.
Perhaps the most interesting results were those that assessed the companies' market activity, as measured by income generated in specific sectors. In Hungary, for example, the 150 companies surveyed earned more than 50 percent of their income from technical services, although the activity generating the most revenue was environmental products at 22 percent. Income generated by water related activities stood at 28 percent, while air related activities earned 19 percent of total revenue and solid waste projects brought in 12 percent of earnings. The remaining 41 percent of revenue was generated by activities in other media, including noise pollution, energy efficiency and landscape and nature conservation.