In the SMEPASS project 2.788,240 € was invested in the period of 20 months, and in total 200 enterprises and 74 consultants and business professionals, mostly from Croatia, were involved. 3500 working days were dedicated to deliver consulting services in the area of marketing and quality management, individually tailored to each of the company involved. Many of the companies, coming from virtually all sectors, from timber and metal processing, textiles, food products in particular organic food, cosmetics and a broad range of services and software, have never before used consultant services.
Making high quality business consulting available to small and medium sized business and helping them to become more competitive, explains the motivation for the SMEPASS initiative. At this stage microbusinesses were included as they represent a significant volume of the Croatian economy which we do not want to neglect. The services were offered for free, to stimulate the market and to promote such services.
SMEPASS project is implemented by Cifesal International Consulting in consortium with SGS Netherlands. The EU project was launched in December 2010 to boost the competitiveness of Croatian SMEs through high quality business consulting services. The projects operated in the context of the European Union’s IPA Regional Competitiveness Program, where IPA stands for ‘Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance’, set-up to support countries to get ready for the EU membership. SMEPASS was managed in close cooperation with the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts.
For more information: www.minpo.hr