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Training courses are most commonly developed to support skills development in SMEs. In Uganda, as
part of the National Export Strategy (see Table 4.1), Uganda Export Promotion Board (UEPB) has
been charged with the role of identifying exporters for training and sensitise them on the importance of
enhancing their managerial skills. In Egypt, the Foreign Trade Training Centre (FTTC) provides a set
of integrated certified courses to improve exporters’ skills for navigating the foreign business
environment and develop consistent export business strategies (Box 4.5). In Yemen, the Handicraft
Export Promotion Program (HEPP) targets Yemen’s poorest communities by working through
producer associations to assist entrepreneurs in developing traditional Yemeni handicrafts of the
highest quality. Such handicrafts include leather goods, pottery, and traditional Yemeni straw-made
goods. Through a mix of interventions, SMEPS has also been working on linking these associations to
higher value and higher volume markets. Trial quantities of Yemeni handicrafts have been exported to
the US and Europe.
Box 4.5 Training for exporting: Trade Information Analysis by the Foreign Trade Training
Centre, Egypt
The Foreign Trade Training Center is a non-profit autonomous training institute under the auspices of
the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), which strives to empower exporters’ skills, enhancing their
knowledge and driving forward their approach towards competitiveness, using a set of integrated
certified courses. To this end, the Center proposes various courses to SMEs. The Trade Information
Analysis is a specific course, targeted for export and marketing managers, to help them address the
international trade environment, select promising markets and identify exports opportunities.
The training deals with :
 Export Marketing Research
 Desk & Field Research
 Using Internet as an Effective source of Information
 Field Research
 Analysing & interpretation of data
 Trade Map Database
 Country& Product Map
 Market Access Map
The length of the courses is 5 hours per day, for 10 days. The training takes place in the premises of
the FTTC and provided by Professional Egyptian trainers with practical experience of international
firm and foreign experts from international foreign trade institutes and organisations.
4.2.3.3 Access to finance and credit export guarantees
Access to finance is rated amongst the main obstacles to investment and international activity by
SMEs across developed and developing countries. The countries surveyed for this report are no
exception in this regard. Indeed, access to finance is one of the areas in which most trade promotion
programmes focus, although, as mentioned above, specialised financial institutions rather than TPOs,
are often in charge of their implementation. This is the case of the Saudi Export Programme (SEP),
which provides guarantees and insurance facilities to mitigate risks associated with international trade
transactions (Box 4.6).