Successful start of drafting Strategic Guidelines for Harmonization of SME Support in BiH

The first workshop for preparation of Strategic Guidelines for Harmonization of SME support in BiH was held in Sarajevo yesterday. A total of 24 participants from ministries, institutes, directorates and agencies at the state level, with representatives of the Foreign Trade Chamber BiH and the Eda –  Enterprise Development Agency, accepted and supported the proposed strategic framework for SME development in BiH for the period 2021-2027 with a standardized strategic planning methodology, prepared by the joint work of teams of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of BiH, the RS Ministry of Economy and Entrepreneurship, the Federal Ministry of Development, Entrepreneurship and Crafts and Brcko District Government – Department for Economic Development, Sports and Culture.

At the second part of the workshop, participants for programming short-term (2020-2021) and long-term interventions (2021-2027) in dimensions 5.a (Procurement and SMEs), 7 (Standards and Technical Regulation) and 10 (Internationalization), provided many very useful inputs. These inputs will be used to prepare an Action Plan for implementation of the SBA at the national level for the period 2020-2021, as well as to continue the process of drafting the Strategic Guidelines for the period 2021-2027.

The participants of the workshop also discussed an overview of activities and interventions in other dimensions in which it is expected cooperation of the leaders/owners of SME development strategies in the Federation of BiH, the Republic of Srpska and the Brcko District BiH, as well as “bottom-up” harmonization.

Host of action planning and development of Strategic Guidelines is the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of BiH – Sector for Economic Development and Entrepreneurship.

The next workshop is scheduled for early March 2020.