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Strand 4: Strengthening of the physical infrastructure (energy and transports) which prevents SMEs to
operate efficiently and access international markets at competitive costs.
Strand 5: Promotion of public-private partnerships, to integrate demand-side perspectives in trade
promotion policies and programmes, empower the SME sector and, combined with the continuation of
fiscal discipline, wean the economies out of their excessive reliance on the public sector.
Strand 6: Activation of the developmental role of SMEs through the improvement of general business
framework conditions for exporting and active policies to address key obstacles to SME export and
bottlenecks to supply-side development. The thorough identification of these obstacles and their
continuous monitoring represent crucial steps in the process of policy design, implementation and
assessment.
Strand 7: Improving the coordination of SME policies across the various agencies and organisations
involved, including TPOs. Fragmentation of the institutional setting and lack of coordination generate
redundancy and reduce the capacity of SMEs to identify and access appropriate services. A
coordination body for SME policies should be identified and generic services should be provided by
one-stop-shops, which limit search costs by SMEs.
Strand 8: Strengthen the capacity of TPOs to differentiate services and segment target SMEs. Generic
information services can be conceived for a large population of firms, but more added-value ones,
such as matching services and, especially, training and innovation-related support, require
differentiation by needs and objectives. In this regard, TPOs need to act as brokers and gatekeepers
within a broader network of institutions and specialised service providers.
Strand 9: Development of a data infrastructure, to monitor business dynamics and performance by size
of firms. Lack of hard data on SME export represents a major barrier to trade promotion and policy
assessment, as well as to intra-OIC cooperation to boost SME participation in global and regional
trade. At its basic level this means a concerted effort to establish a robust data collection mechanism
and a R&D framework, possibly in partnership with local universities and research centres, as well as
in collaboration with international institutions, such as the OECD, which have an established
methodology for evidence-based policy making. Data collection needs to be carried out at both the
micro level of firms and at the macro level of the economy. There seems to be much of the latter in
place already but there is a significant deficit in terms of data availability at the level of the firm. As
part of this development careful attention should be given to the adoption and creation of appropriate
metrics for monitoring and evaluating the dynamics of performance of businesses and the wider
economy.
Finally, we recommend that care be taken to avoid the adoption of a ‘one size’ policy mechanism
across all countries. Although all countries benefit from hard and soft infrastructure development and
diversity, it may not be possible to introduce changes on all fronts at the same time. Countries need to
make particular adjustments and changes according to the stages of their development and also with
regard to the real and perceived needs of its people, its firms and its capacity to absorb and deliver on
those changes. We, therefore, suggest the following differentiated export promotion models for low,
middle and high income countries:
a) For LICS: we recommend a strong emphasis on the skills development of its people centred
round a small selection of key industries that have the best export potential and which are less
reliant on commodity price fluctuations. The early adoption of ‘low threshold’ technologies
such as mobile phones (as developed successfully in Bangladesh) could also be of value so
that these countries can potentially leapfrog stages of economic development. Where feasible
models of frugal innovation to develop products and services should be scaled up with the
help of donor agencies with a view to the possible delivery of products that can also be
available as exports to other countries;