The Working Party on SMEs and Entrepreneursip (WPSMEE) is a Working Party of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which offers advice to member countries on the design and implementation of small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurship policies. It is a body of the Committee for Industry, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).
Initially known as the OECD Working Party on SMEs (WPSME – until 2002), the group was created in 1993 after Australian businessman and philanthropist Peter Fritz advocated the establishment of a body that focused on SMEs during meetings with OECD representatives in Australia earlier in the year.
At a meeting in the Australian Embassy in Paris, OECD representatives agreed to create the Working Group, and its draft mandate was published in March.
The group initially undertook a comprehensive analysis of SME policies and issues at both the national and international level. This led to the creation of a comprehensive analytical framework identifying best practice policies in member states which informed a series of reports, including the OECD Manual for the Evaluation of SME and Entrepreneurship Policies.
The Working Party also focused on the potential and promotion of women's entrepreneurship and published a report on this topic in 1997. A complementary international conference was also organised to assess national issues in member states and develop best practice policies.
The research published by the WPSMEE led to the first Ministerial Conference on SMEs in Bologna, Italy, from June 14–15, 2000. The conference, entitled “Enhancing the competitiveness of SME’s in the Global Economy: Strategies and Policies”, focused on innovation, Ecommerce, and SME exporterss in developing countries. [1] Forty-nine countries participated and SME and Industry ministerial representatives adopted the Bologna Charter on SME policies.
‘The Bologna Process’. [2] gained momentum with the second Ministerial Conference, held in Istanbul in June 2004. This conference saw 72 countries participate, with Ministers committing to the ‘Istanbul Ministerial Declaration on Fostering the Growth of Innovative and Internationally Competitive SMEs’. [3] The Ministerial Conference in Istanbul led to the development of an evaluation framework of SME programmes and policies, the improvement of SME data and statistics with an emphasis on female entrepreneurship, and additional work on SME globalisation. [2]
Since the second Ministerial Conference, the Working Party has organised further high-level events under the auspices of the Bologna Process. These include:
Since the Bologna +10 meeting, the Working Party has published numerous reports, comparative notes and policy briefs:
Now in its ninth edition, the Financing Scoreboard provides data from 48 countries on SME lending, financing conditions and policy initiatives.
The report presents the latest trends in the performance of SMEs and entrepreneurs, and it provides a comprehensive overview of the business conditions and policy frameworks that can enable them to thrive in a digitalised and globalized world.
In 2019, the WPSMEE develop a new project to assist economies in developing effective SME policy, reporting on global megatrends, economic and institutional contexts and financial measures.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the WPSMEE prepared periodically updated notes on the economic outlook for SMEs and analysis of emergency support measures and SME policy approaches in OECD member nations.
The economy of Kazakhstan is the largest in Central Asia in both absolute and per capita terms, but the currency saw a sharp depreciation between 2013 and 2016. It possesses oil reserves as well as minerals and metals. It also has considerable agricultural potential with its vast steppe lands accommodating both livestock and grain production. The mountains in the south are important for apples and walnuts; both species grow wild there. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources.
The International Energy Agency is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation established in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The IEA was initially dedicated to responding to physical disruptions in the supply of oil, as well as serving as an information source on statistics about the international oil market and other energy sectors.
Economic forecasting is the process of making predictions about the economy. Forecasts can be carried out at a high level of aggregation—for example for GDP, inflation, unemployment or the fiscal deficit—or at a more disaggregated level, for specific sectors of the economy or even specific firms.Economic forecasting is a measure to find out the future prosperity of a pattern of investment and is the key activity in economic analysis.
Aid effectiveness is the effectiveness of development aid in achieving economic or human development. Following the Cold War in the late 1990s, donor governments and aid agencies began to realize that their many different approaches and requirements for conditioning aid were imposing huge costs on developing countries and making aid less effective. They began working with each other, and with developing countries, to harmonize their work to improve its effect. Aid agencies are always looking for new ways to improve aid effectiveness, including conditionality, capacity building and support for improved governance.
Financial sector development in developing countries and emerging markets is part of the private sector development strategy to stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty. The Financial sector is the set of institutions, instruments, and markets. It also includes the legal and regulatory framework that permit transactions to be made through the extension of credit. Fundamentally, financial sector development concerns overcoming “costs” incurred in the financial system. This process of reducing costs of acquiring information, enforcing contracts, and executing transactions results in the emergence of financial contracts, intermediaries, and markets. Different types and combinations of information, transaction, and enforcement costs in conjunction with different regulatory, legal and tax systems have motivated distinct forms of contracts, intermediaries and markets across countries in different times.
Mahmoud Mohieldin, born on 15 January 1965 in Egypt, is the World Bank Group's Senior Vice President for the 2030 Development Agenda, UN Relations, and Partnerships. He serves as a Board member on the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, as well as an observer to the EU Multi-Stakeholder Platform for the SDGs. Dr. Mohieldin previously served as Corporate Secretary, President's Special Envoy, and Managing Director for the World Bank Group.
The International Trade Centre (ITC) is a multilateral agency which has a joint mandate with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations (UN) through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE PhD FRSA was born in Bangor, Gwynedd and brought up in Pwllheli on the Llyn Peninsula. He is currently Assistant Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Enterprise) and the chair in entrepreneurship at the University of South Wales. He is visiting professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Turku in Finland, newspaper columnist and the creator of the Wales Fast Growth 50, the annual barometer of entrepreneurial firms in Wales.
The Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) of the European Commission is meant to improve the competitiveness of European companies facing the challenges of globalization. The programme is mainly aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which will receive support for innovation activities, better access to finance and business support services. It will run from 2007 to 2013.
Antimonopoly Policy Improvement Center (APIC) is a leading think-tank, non-commercial and independent research institution which focuses in competition, innovation, business and consumer policies in Uzbekistan. APIC's slogan mark is "Knowledge for development", which APIC tries to achieve through the results of its products. Members of the staff consists of young and professional specialists from the leading universities of US, UK and other developed countries. It is the first institution in Uzbekistan, which started publishing monthly business activity index in July 2009, which consists of surveys from the large and medium-sized companies, representing leading and the most dynamic spheres of Uzbekistan's economy. One of its flagship research products was the study of remittances in Uzbekistan, conducted with the financial assistance of International Development Research Centre of Canada and on innovation policies in Uzbekistan. APIC also conducts due diligence, risk analysis, market studies, nationwide surveys (SPSS), trainings and seminars.
This article covers the best practices and needs for reform in entrepreneurship policies in Egypt.
The OECD Environmental Performance Reviews programme provides independent assessments of countries’ progress in achieving domestic and international environmental policy commitments. The programme has completed over 60 reviews that aim to help improve individual and collective performance in environmental management by: promoting peer learning; enhancing countries’ accountability to each other and to the public; and helping governments to assess progress in achieving their environmental goals.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an intergovernmental economic organisation with 37 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. It is a forum of countries describing themselves as committed to democracy and the market economy, providing a platform to compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practices and coordinate domestic and international policies of its members. Generally, OECD members are high-income economies with a very high Human Development Index (HDI) and are regarded as developed countries. As of 2017, the OECD member countries collectively comprised 62.2% of global nominal GDP and 42.8% of global GDP at purchasing power parity. The OECD is an official United Nations observer.
The Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Assistance for the Least Developed Countries is a global development program with the objective of supporting least developed countries (LDCs) to better integrate into the global trading system and to make trade a driver for development. The multi-donor program was launched on 1 January 2007 as the successor of the Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to the Least-Developed Countries, which existed from October 1997 to December 2006. The second phase of the EIF has started on 1 January 2016 and will last for 7 years.
UNCTAD's Division on Investment and Enterprise (DIAE) is a research and policy practice centre of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development whose work focuses on investment and enterprise with a particular view on development. The Division's overarching mandate is to steer sustainable development and inclusive growth objectives through investment and enterprise development, productive capacity-building, industrialization and economic diversification. Its work programme is tailored to serve all UN member States, with a particular emphasis on the needs of least-developed and other structurally weak and vulnerable economies.
The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) is a treaty-based international organization headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. The organization aims to promote green growth, a growth paradigm that is characterized by a balance of economic growth and environmental sustainability. GGGI provides research and stakeholder engagement for green growth plans, especially in developing countries, aiming to replace the more typical paradigm based on industrial development.
Government competitiveness is a new concept created by Tobin Im, a scholar of public administration and a professor at the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University. Since 2011, Center for Government Competitiveness (CGC) at Seoul National University has developed the Government Competitiveness (GC) index which evaluates government achievements in the various fields and furthermore provides policy recommendations to increase competitiveness of government in the future.
Karl Aiginger is an Austrian economist. He was the head of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) between 2005 and 2016, he is a professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and an honorary professor at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. He was succeeded by Christoph Badelt as the head of WIFO in September 2016. He established and manages the lateral thinking platform Policy Crossover Center, an interdisciplinary discussion forum on European policy. As an author, he is widely held in libraries worldwide.
Marianne Fay is an American economist and writer. She specializes in infrastructure, development, and climate change.
Aid for Trade is an initiative by the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as a policy concept in international economic and trade development, concerned with helping developing countries and particularly the least developed countries build trade capacity and infrastructure.