Regional cooperation is one of the key prerequisites for the stabilisation and EU association processes to move forward in the Western Balkans. The implementing partner institutions in this project will focus on shared challenges in the field of Private Sector Development. It will build their capacity to jointly tackle these challenges on a regional level. This initiative builds on achievements over the last 3 years in the Private Sector Development Network 2006-2008.

The main project objective is to foster the regionalisation of existing economic development oriented institutions and their activities and the development of new regional economic initiatives. This will be achieved through following:

SME Agencies, Trade Fairs and EU Days

Representatives of the South East Europe SME Agencies all agreed to form a regional SME Association to structure cooperation that has existed informally between them under the PSD network over the last three years. Two of the main activities the agencies will be implementing together are the regionalisation of their existing EU Days and Trade Fairs. The SME Agency in Belgrade is lead implementation partner.

Serbian SME Development Agency and SPARK signed the MoU (Read more...)

Preparatory meeting among SME Development Agencies from Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia was held on 17th November 2009 in Podgorica. During the meeting representatives from the SME Development Agencies actively discussed about the Establishment of SEE SME Association and future Statute of the Association. The Association will be focused on formalization of already existing informal network among 4 SME development agencies, and creation of a legal basis for regional economic cooperation, support to SME development, strengthening of the cooperation between SMEs and project development. The Association will be voluntary, nongovernmental, non for profit organization. Membership will be open for any other organization from the Western Balkans, SEE region and further active in the field of SME, entrepreneurship and private sector development.

EU Day Conference in Skopje, was organised from 6 till 8 May 2009 by European Business Association, Government of Macedonia, City of Skopje, University of St. Cyril and Methodius and many other local and national organisations and agencies (Read more...) 

Regional MA Programme and Bachelor Course in Entrepreneurship

The establishment of the Regional Master program and Bachelor course in Entrepreneurship is designed to build upon the results of the previous programme in stimulating entrepreneurial education and making these results sustainable by institutionalising them in formal educational programmes. Importantly, it will institutionalise progress made in business education and the role of internships to date. As agreed by partners, the University of Novi Sad - the UNESCO Chair for Entrepreneurial Studies will host the Regional MA Programme in Entrepreneurship and take a leading role in developing the BA courses.


Development of training materials and design of the regional MA programme in Entrepreneurship started with the first workshop organised by the UNESCO Chair for Entrepreneurial Studies of University of Novi Sad, 20-23 March 2009 (Read more).

Regional Master Course on Entrepreneurship started on 30th October at the University of Novi Sad. The MA course attends 27 students from the Southeast Europe region. The opening lectures were focused on Entrepreneurial Finances and provided insight to: Corporate governance in SME; Financial reports; Capital budgeting; Long term financing; Short term financing; Risk management ; Banks and START UP financing. Second module will be focused on Human Resources.

Institutional Capacity Building

All the partner institutions that will be implementing the project are facing one common daunting challenge: building up the capacity of their institutions to meet the growing challenges and expectations placed before them. All local partners have indicated the need in building the capacity of their staff to face up to these challenges and therefore, a capacity building component is designed to directly contribute to the main aim of this proposal: to make results attained to date sustainable and strongly embedded in implementing local institutions.

First regional capacity training for project participating staff was organised in Ohrid on "EU project development and funding opportunities under IPA".

Visit Transparkency to see the financial information for this project.