Through the new collaboration, ITC and SMBA will exchange market intelligence and best practices related to SME competitiveness and promote related partnerships and networking activities.
ITC and SMBA will help build the export capacity of SMEs to enable them to better respond to market opportunities, diversify and connect to global value chains. Initial areas of cooperation will include business diagnostics, consulting, standards and certification, export capability assessment, e‑commerce and technology transfer.
A memorandum of understanding setting out the partnership between the two organizations was signed by ITC Deputy Executive Director Dorothy Tembo and Yong Seok Roh, SMBA Deputy Director General, in Geneva on 14 April.
‘This partnership gives us the opportunity to advance our collaboration in more concrete terms,’ said Dorothy Tembo, Deputy Executive Director, ITC. ‘Both our organizations have strong commitments to the central role that trade can play to drive economic growth and, beyond that, the special role that SMEs have in this context. We look forward to building on this foundation to have a much broader scope of collaboration in the future.’
‘Nowadays, our government focuses on globalization and in particular, the globalization of SMEs,’ said Yong Seok Roh, Deputy Director General, SMBA. ‘By engaging with ITC, we hope that SMBA and the Korean government will more actively participate in knowledge sharing with SMEs in developing countries. It’s a win-win. We hope our engagement will lead to a bright future and I hope this is just the starting point.’
