Press releases

On 13-15 December, 2017, the Organisation for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (ODSME) supported by the European Union Technical Assistance and Information Exchange Instrument (TAIEX) organised a training session on international practices on increasing the export capacity of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The training was attended by members of the ODIMM team, the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure, the Organisation for Attracting Investment and Export Promotion and the Moldovan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI).

The workshop is the first event in the TAIEX series of missions and aims to increase ODIMM’s capacities to assist domestic companies that want to expand their market abroad.

The training meetings analysed the legal, institutional, local business environment and existing tools for export promotion.

Tajana Kesic Sapic, Director of the Croatian Chamber of Economics, Industry and IT, provided a retrospective of the evolution of the SME sector, policies and instruments in place for the development of the sector in Croatia from the pre-accession period as well as after accession to the European Union in 2013, focusing on the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs and the progress made in recent years.

Michel Gelenine, Investment Promotion Expert at Business France, presented France’s support tools and methods to promote export and investment.

In this context, experts stressed the importance of entrepreneurship and SMEs in Europe in general, reiterating that over the past five years they have created around 85 % of new jobs and provided two thirds of all private sector jobs in the EU. The European Commission considers that SMEs are key to ensuring economic growth.

Specific recommendations have also been developed for the creation of new services and support instruments for SME internationalisation. According to experts, support measures to increase export capacities need to be developed and adopted; combining all SME support instruments into a single agency for efficiency and clarity for entrepreneurs; providing grants for marketing activities in new markets; adoption of new technologies and introduction of IT tools and adoption of the cluster model for regional development.

The mission will contribute to the creation of a methodology to support the pre-export phase of MSEs in Moldova.