At the same time, from the point of view of external factors, it is necessary to point out
that in the future the decisive factors related to development courses, dynamics and
competitiveness at the local level will also be the following:
• strategies of multilateral governmental associations
• strategies of individual countries and groups of countries
• strategies of large business groups, especially trans-national corporations
• technical advancement in general, especially in research-intensive fields
• demand structure in markets of individual countries and regions
• relative ratio of factors in work- and capital-intensive industries, individual
countries and regions
Consequently, it is necessary to emphasise that appropriate preparation and a
dedicated approach to the planning function at the local level guarantee an efficient
system of market economy and related long-term macroeconomic stability.
Basic Aspects of Strategic Planning
In its essence, strategic planning rests upon the aspiration and need to make some
changes at the local level so as to ensure growth and development in the middle and
long run through qualitative and quantitative approaches, to enable evolution and
succession, instead of revolution and restart of initial development processes, over long
time periods which will cover a range of generations - diagram 1.
Therefore strategic planning entails, as does any other planning practice, two basic
preconditions:
a) Adequate institutional grounds that will establish mutual relations among all agents -
stakeholders within a community/joint arena, and
b) Corresponding professional know-how to make sure that local participants at different
levels do contribute to the creation of efficient action programmes (where failures are
eliminated beforehand, mistakes avoided in advance, etc.).
Diagram 1: The basis of Strategic Planning
