Press releases

Representatives of the Organisation for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (ODIMM) and Business Incubators shall attend a training session on how to apply the methodology effectively and carry out a focus group with exporting entrepreneurs or potential exporters from the Republic of Moldova.

The training is part of the World Bank’s Improvement of Competitiveness project “Focus groups with exporters to develop the customised training programme for exporters and implement the concept of training trainers for ODIMM staff”, implemented by the consulting company Gateway & Partners.

At the start of the training session, Petru Gurgurov, ODIMM Acting Director welcomed the schooling initiative of the ODIMM team and selected staff from the Business Incubators on SME export readiness by implementing the train-the-trainer concept.

Andrei Crigan, Local Coordinator of Gateway & Partners states that this project aims to identify and analyse the main difficulties encountered by domestic export-oriented SMEs in identifying and entering new markets.

“After centralising the results of Focus Groups among entrepreneurs with export potential, Gateway & Partners, in collaboration with ODIMM, will develop a module based entrepreneurial training programme that will cover entrepreneurs’ knowledge and information vacuum on export procedures,” argues Coordination Group leader Andrei Crigan.

Cornel Coșer, Director of Gateway & Partners Moldova reiterated that according to data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics and Customs Service, in 2016 only 6 % of active Moldovan companies export products to the foreign market. Of the approximately 2 thousand exporting companies, half have local capital, of which 97 percent are in the SME sector.