Turkey's SME policies scrutinised by OECD
A review of small and medium sized enterprise (SME) policies in Turkey has concluded that, while they clearly meet international standards, improvements to the business environment in which SMEs operate are needed, as is a more systematic evaluation of programmes. Turkey volunteered to be the subject of the first Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) SME policy review. Erkan Gürkan, President of KOSGEB, Turkey's 'small and medium industry development organisation', claimed on 4 June that the results would assist his country in becoming more competitive. Tom Gray, co-author of the OECD report, praised KOSGEB's programmes, many of which are based on best practice models. He identified Turkey's technology development centres as being particularly impressive. 'However, the whole is not as effective as we would like it to be in terms of support to SMEs,' he added. He recommended that KOSGEB, which currently focuses on industrial SMEs, should consider reaching out to the three million non-industrial SMEs in the country that are also contributing to competitiveness. He also recommended an improvement to data collection procedures, saying that 'better policy begins with better data'.
Kraje
Türkiye