December 29^th, 2015

Danijela Bobić, Program Director at Center for Advanced Economic Studies (CEVES), wrote an article for the January issue of professional magazine „Business and Finance“, on the topic of International Competitiveness of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The article shows an overview of international activities of Serbian SMEs, their ability to enter and survive on the international market, and specific sectors of the economy with a significant base of healthy SMEs, capable of growing and developing through dynamic exports, while serving as an engine for the overall economic growth.

The article also points to the most important obstacles to a stronger international engagement of SMEs, mostly in the field of access to finance and the capacities needed for finding foreign buyers and following trends and requirements on foreign markets. This is further evidenced by the fact that only 18.7% of SME exporters are capable of exporting to the same market for three consecutive years. In order to address this problem, policy makers should put their efforts into integrating a bigger number of SMEs into international trade flows, and creating the means to enable their survival on foreign markets. CEVES wishes to inspire professional audience and policy makers to start a debate on potential development policies, in order to support continuing exports of SMEs through alleviating current obstacles.