In the Central European Initiative, highest hopes are being put in SME's. Some economy and trade ministers claim that even the success of the entire Initiative depends on them. We talk to Jože Smole, the State Secretary of the Ministry for Small Business and Tourism of the Republic of Slovenia, who is at the same time the chairman of a CEI working group on SME, about whether or not these hopes are realistic.

Mr. Smole, while the role of your working commission is discussed a lot, the public de facto do not know it. Could you explain it?

Our working group is a group of governmental officials and members of several other CEI public agencies promoting SME's. Its primary task is to contribute toward developing support activities based on information transfer and best practice recognized by the member states of the European Union. In order to facilitate the transfer, the Central European Initiative sponsors conferences, seminars, working meetings and other actions organized by the Initiative's respective members.

In 1998, a number of such actions were focused on discussing the SME support. For example, a conference on SME development within the Central European Initiative was held in Sophia, as was a meeting of experts in Geneva to discuss SME financing, or I mention also a seminar on the role of the government in creating business and SME support which converged on Potenze, Italy.

In this area the CEI has strengthened cooperation with some international and regional organisations such as the OECD or the UN Economic Commission for Europe. A plan for next years says that even the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Commission have become involved in certain activities oriented toward SME support.

It should be noted that our working group is working with limited human and financial resources.

What are your experiences with the interest in your group's activities from CEE SME's? Could you compare their interest with that from Austrian and Italian businessmen?

Our working group is not working directly with SME's. It includes the support for those institutions and organisations engaged with support actions for SME's in their mother countries. Therefore the interest in our group's activities from SME's can be assessed equally neither in Italy and Austria, nor in the CEI other states.

In my opinion SME's, and especially association thereof, are taking an active interest in the quality of support to be provided by national support institutions and organisations. The transfer of best practice, access to information, technical assistance by us may improve the scope and quality of such support. Thus SME's indirectly benefit our activities.

How are SME support projects funded? Can you spell out the machine of such projects sign-off and financing?

The activities of our working group are predicated upon self-financing provided by the Initiative member states. As I previously said, in cooperation with other regional and international organisations, the CEI Secretariat sponsors and provides for organisational assistance for various support actions. The Secretariat's activity programme includes cooperation with financial institutions and organisations that should lead to an improved financing for SME projects. This objective should be borne out, inter alia, by the next work seminar on commercial-advisory services modeled on the EBRD within the framework of assistance to sift out partners, financial resources, suppliers and the like.

Slovak Trade FORUM