Study on Support Services for Smes in International Business Final Report
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Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business Final Report Client: DG Enterprise and Industry Rotterdam, March 22, 2013 Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business Within the Framework Contract for Industrial Competitiveness and Market Performance – ENTR/90/PP/2011/FC Final Report Client: DG Enterprise and Industry Compiled by: Paul Wymenga; Nora Plaisier; Jurgen Vermeulen. Rotterdam, March 22, 2013 About ECSIP The European Competitiveness and Sustainable Industrial Policy Consortium, ECSIP Consortium for short, is the name chosen by the team of partners, subcontractors and individual experts that have agreed to work as one team for the purpose of the Framework Contract on ‘Industrial Competitiveness and Market Performance’. The Consortium is composed of Ecorys Netherlands (lead partner), Cambridge Econometrics, CASE, CSIL, Danish Technological Institute, Decision, ECIS, Euromonitor, Fratini Vergano, Frost & Sullivan, IDEA Consult, IFO Institute, MCI, and wiiw, together with a group of 28 highly skilled and specialised individuals. ECSIP Consortium p/a ECORYS Nederland BV Watermanweg 44 3067 GG Rotterdam P.O. Box 4175 3006 AD Rotterdam The Netherlands T. +31 (0)10 453 88 00 F. +31 (0)10 453 87 55 Email [email protected] 2 Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business Table of contents Section I Report 7 Preface 9 Summary 11 1 Introduction 15 1.1 Background to the study 15 1.2 Methodology and approach 16 1.2.1 The right methodology 17 1.2.2 Phase 1: Inception and contracting local country experts 17 1.2.3 Phase 2: Design web survey and pilot phase 18 1.2.4 Phase 3: Implementation of web survey and quality control 18 1.2.5 Phase 4: Gap analysis 19 1.2.6 Gap analysis 19 2 Findings 21 2.1 Scope and breadth of type of organisations identified 21 2.1.1 EU-27 Member States 22 2.1.2 Third countries 24 2.2 General description on support services collected 26 2.2.1 Support services in EU-27 member states 27 2.2.2 Support services in third countries 30 2.3 Support services at EU level 33 2.4 Feedback given on the mapping exercise 35 2.4.1 Feedback from respondents 35 2.4.2 Feedback from non-respondents 36 3 Analysis of survey results and gap analysis 39 3.1 Number of services, organisations and users 39 3.1.1 EU 27 39 3.1.2 Third countries 47 3.2 Target groups of services 54 3.2.1 EU 27 54 3.2.2 Third countries 62 3.3 Way of service provision 69 3.3.1 EU27 69 3.3.2 Third countries 77 3.4 Effectiveness of support services 83 3.4.1 Evidence on the effectiveness of support services and the needs of SME 83 3.4.2 Linking the evidence on needs and effectiveness to the identified support services85 3.5 Target markets of instruments 86 3.6 Concluding: identifying gaps and overlaps 90 Types of services 90 4 Conclusions and policy recommendations 93 Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business 3 4.1 Conclusions 93 4.2 Policy implications 94 Section II Annexes 97 Annex I Web survey questions 99 Annex II Additional tables and figures 113 Annex III List of contacts for EU-27 and third countries 131 4.3 EU-27 131 4.3.1 Austria 131 4.3.2 Belgium 135 4.3.3 Bulgaria 138 4.3.4 Cyprus 141 4.3.5 Czech Republic 143 4.3.6 Denmark 145 4.3.7 Estonia 150 4.3.8 Finland 153 4.3.9 France 155 4.3.10 Germany 159 4.3.11 Greece 162 4.3.12 Hungary 163 4.3.13 Ireland 166 4.3.14 Italy 169 4.3.15 Latvia 172 4.3.16 Lithuania 175 4.3.17 Luxembourg 179 4.3.18 Malta 182 4.3.19 The Netherlands 187 4.3.20 Poland 189 4.3.21 Portugal 193 4.3.22 Romania 198 4.3.23 Slovakia 200 4.3.24 Slovenia 203 4.3.25 Spain 205 4.3.26 Sweden 210 4.3.27 UK 213 4.4 Third countries 217 4.4.1 China 217 4.4.2 USA 223 4.4.3 India 230 4.4.4 Australia 231 4.4.5 Brazil 233 4.4.6 Canada 234 4.4.7 Chile 234 4.4.8 Egypt 236 4.4.9 Indonesia 238 4.4.10 Israel 239 4.4.11 Japan 240 4.4.12 Malaysia 242 4 Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business 4.4.13 Mexico 243 4.4.14 Morocco 244 4.4.15 Russia 244 4.4.16 Saudi Arabia 246 4.4.17 Serbia 247 4.4.18 South Africa 249 4.4.19 South Korea 250 4.4.20 Taiwan 251 4.4.21 Thailand 253 4.4.22 Tunisia 255 4.4.23 Turkey 256 4.4.24 Ukraine 257 4.4.25 Vietnam 258 Annex IV Identified support services through online survey (fiches) 261 Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business 5 Section I Report Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business 7 Preface On 25th of July 2012 the contract between DG Enterprise and Ecorys Nederland BV was signed to conduct a study on support services for EU SMEs in international business. The web survey for this study was executed by Ros Grimes and Duleepa Panadura-Acharige from the Ecorys UK Survey Team. Dr David Regeczi assisted with producing the support fiches from the online database. Dr Geert Steurs of IDEA Consult did the quality control of the reporting for Ecorys Nederland BV. Dr Viera Spanikova did the quality checks of the data on the support services submitted to the online database. During the study, the study team received guidance from Mr Christian Siebert, Christos Kyriatzis, Carmen-Raluca Ipate, Wojciech Sopinski, and Nikoletta Nagy. The study team has appreciated this guidance. Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business 9 Summary Background Growth in the EU has been under pressure for almost five years now. Relatively few SMEs in the EU are doing business beyond Europe. As SMEs are the backbone of the European economy, they could potentially be the vehicle to restoring growth in the EU, provided they enter the markets of fast growing economies such as those of the BRICs. Based on the argument that supporting SMEs to internationalise is in the public interest, a key action of industrial policy is to provide support services to SMEs in order to make it easier for them to do international business with priority third country markets. Among the objectives of the Commission’s strategy in the Communication on ‘Small Business, Big World’ were: to provide SMEs with easily accessible and adequate information on how to expand their business outside the EU, improve the coherence of the activities and fill the gaps in the existing services. The present study on mapping and analysing the existing support services comes directly from the above strategy. This study serves two purposes: Collect the material for a new portal to be developed for EU SMEs seeking support services for internationalisation; Assist with identifying gaps and overlaps in existing support services. The study aims to assess the scope and availability of support services for EU SMEs, both inside and in 25 countries outside Europe. The outcome of the study should be an inventory of the support measures and an analysis of gaps and overlaps in existing services being offered so as to identify the needs for any future additional action. Methodology and approach Scoping, contracting and instructing local country experts During the inception phase the scope of support services was set. Support services were defined as private and public measures and initiatives taken at local, regional, national and EU level offered in Europe and abroad to help the European SMEs do business in third country markets. The collection of support services within the EU has been done by a network of local country experts. In the third countries the consultant had either an own country expert or the EU delegation was approached. The first task of the local country experts was to identify contact persons administering support services within the EU and in the selected third countries. Preparation of the web survey The design of the online survey was carefully done in consultation with the client. A piloting phase of the survey was conducted before it was completely rolled out to the 27 Member States and 25 priority third country markets. Implementation of the survey During the implementation of the survey the response rate was monitored and a number of reminders were sent to contact persons who had not filled out the survey yet. The data collected were quality checked among other things for completeness and double entries. Also a final check Study on Support Services for SMEs in International Business 11 was carried out to see whether all main support service players at EU- and member state level were included. Findings from the survey In total, around 1,197 organisations have been identified by the local experts, EU delegations in third countries, European business associations and Ecorys affiliate offices in third countries. Of these 1,197 organisations, there were 658 organisations from the EU-27 and 539 organisations from the 25 third countries. All of these organisations have received an invitation to participate in the survey. In total, these 1,197 organisations provided 1,542 support services (993 in the EU-27 and 549 in third countries).