MUMBAI, February 13: The European Commission (EC) has launched a programme to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Asia and Europe to enhance their international business. The Asia-Invest programme will disburse ECU 45 million (around Rs 18 crore) for the purpsoe in five years. However, as China has already received the lion's share of ECU 10 milion, the balance will have to be shared by the remaining 17 nations."The aim of the programme is to promote EU-Asia economic co-operation," said EC administrator Andrew Jacob. SMEs are the focus as they do not have the resources to explore new markets, he added.
The programme will help these companies forge alliances and select partners. "The Asia-Invest programme has four main instruments to facilitate investments - business-priming fund, Asia investment facility, Asia-Enterprise and Asia-partenariat."
Under the business-priming fund, the programme will co-finance research and monitoring of Asian markets for European Union (EU) companies to facilitatetheir strategic decisions. It will cater to training courses for language and business-culture skills for EU and Asian companies to provide key information on doing business in target markets. It will also offer technical assistance to companies from less-developed countries, Jacob said.The Asia investment facility will give a participant an opportunity to study the particular industrial sector in a country and identify business opportunities.
Through Asia enterprise and Asia partenariat, the programme will organise business meets in various countries.
This will allow enterprises to have a one-to-one dialogue with their counterparts in other countries.
To offer the maximum benefit, the Asia-Invest programme will include business organisations such as trade chambers from Asia and Europe to become members of the programme, said Asia-Invest Secretariat manager Lambert Kleinmann. This will not only help create better awareness, but also contrbute to preparation of their proposals. "Their task will be toassist the Asia-Invest Secretariat in disseminating information to target organisations and companies," he added.
The exchange of information will be facilitated by these organisations and other centres such as European Business Information Centres (EBICs) and Technology Information Promotion System (TIPS) in various countries.
The programme will cover countries in the EU and south-east Asia including Afghanisthan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
Apart from China, no other country has been allocated any specific quota, said Jacob, adding that the proposals from various countries will be selected on merit.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
