Strengthening the system of small and medium enterprises
Areas of intervention
Bosnia and Herzegovina: cantons of Zenica-Doboj, Herzegovina-Neretva, municipalities of Prijedor and Tuzla
Serbia: Šumadija-Pomoravlje region and municipality of Lazarevac
Goals
To enhance the development potentials of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of partner territories through the strengthening of territorial networks between public and private actors that deal with local economic development and promotes the improvement and development of skills and of qualified services for SMEs
Partners
Region Tuscany (lead partner), region Emilia Romagna, Toscana Promozione (Italy), Cantons Herzegovina-Neretva and Zenica-Doboj, city Prijedor, municipality of Tuzla, SMEs centres PREDA, LINK, BSC – Business Service Centre Ze-Do Canton, RPC Lipnica – Tuzla, Entrepreneurs association of Tuzla, REDAH – Regional agency for economic development of Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina), city of Kragujevac, municipality of Lazarevac, Regional centre for SMEs development and entrepreneurship “Beograd”, Regional agency for economic development of Šumadija and Pomoravlje (Serbia)
Donor
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Region Tuscany
In SEE countries, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) policies are still marked by a poor efficiency and effectiveness with no qualified systems responding to the real needs of enterprises.
Enterprises, for their parts, suffer from the poor competitiveness on regional and foreign markets due to structural weaknesses, limited production capacity and insufficient access to markets.
To address these problems, project activities include:strengthening territorial networks between public and private actors influencing local economic development, improvement and development of innovative and qualified services to SMEs in line with European standards, elaboration of sector analysis in priority fields and market and product research, aimed at the organization of meetings between Italian and South East European enterprises, and improvement of the SMEs development policies.
