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Donors: SEED
Development of small and medium size enterprises
Southeast Europe Enterprise Development -SEED is a five-year initiative of several donors with the total budget of 25 million American dollars, managed by the International Financial Corporation (IFC) from the World Bank Group for strengthening the small and medium size enterprises in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro.
 One of SEED main goals is to improve and meet the need of high-quality consulting services and training courses that are available in the sector of small and medium size enterprises. SEED mission is: "Improving the life in our region through the development small and medium size enterprises and mobilization of integrated services for consulting and training that are supposed to cover all aspects of competition in the sector". SEED strategic goals are: increasing the competitiveness of the small and medium-size enterprises in the region; development of the markets of consulting and development services; and improving the business environment.
SEED headquarters is in Sarajevo, but it also has its offices in Skopje, Tirana, Belgrade and Banja Luka and employs more than 80 people. SEED work is financed by Austria, Canada, Greece, Holland, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain and IFC.
SEED successfully implemented several projects in Macedonia. The HACCP Standardization project covered theoretic and practical training for the implementation of the HACCP standard for 7 national consultants that enabled them to acquire knowledge and skills to prepare the Macedonian enterprises to implement this standard. Further, SEED helped one national enterprise to implement the quality and safety process in the food processing, which is in fact the first Macedonian enterprise to have the HACCP certificate.
The possibilities for financing the small businesses in Macedonia were considerably improved by with the new Law for leasing that was passed with support from SEED. The Law that the Macedonian Parliament passed on 31 January 2002 allows the establishment of new independent leasing companies with a minimum capital of 100,000 Euros. The same law draws clear and transparent standards for providing equipment for local companies on the basis of a contract.
SEED provided technical support for preparing the National Strategy for small and medium size enterprises, which was accepted by the Macedonian Government on 30 July 2002 and it is a basis for the implementation of the programmes of the Ministry of Economy Department for Support of Small and Medium Size Enterprises. The cooperation with the Ministry of Economy will continue in future with the preparation and implementation of bigger projects with better results.
Besides that, SEED has also developed and realized a number of specialized training courses in the field of general, executive and financial management, which were attended by more than 400 small and medium size enterprises. At the moment, SEED has a wide range of specific training programmes that cover all aspects of small and medium size enterprises work. |
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