Dr Johan Hesse, First Secretary and Head of Operations section for Economic Reform and Natural Resources of the European Commission Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina attended the closing ceremony of the EU TAC Training and Consultancy Project for Small and Medium Enterprises in BiH. The objective of the event was to present the achievements of this EU-funded project in the overall regional economic development of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its relevance in the context of European Integration processes. In addition, it aimed to present practical recommendations for further capacity advancement of the BiH economic service providers, entrepreneurs and regional development agencies as well as to add to further promotion of entrepreneurial education in general.
“This project highlighted the importance of the entrepreneurial education to the business community and stakeholders” said Mr. Hesse and presented other project achievements including certification of 50 EU TAC trainers from all over the country, business trainings events provided for over 1500 people, start-up of 15 new companies and relevant consultancy support for over 50 companies.
Explaining the additional relevance of the project, Mr. Hesse added: “The project outgrew itself – it did more than was initially planned and significantly supported regional economic development in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. He also reflected that one of the lessons learnt through the project implementation, was that projects need to be flexible and ready to adapt to a daily-changing environment in order to efficiently and effectively carry out its activities. In this regard, he stressed that only continued presence in the field allows projects to recognise when they have to adapt.
On behalf of the Regional Development Agencies Network, Mr. Ševkija Okerić, SERDA Director expressed his gratitude to the European Commission for financing this project that contribute to further process of the regional economic recovery and development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Explaining that the real benefits of this project will be visible in future, Mr. Okerić noted that the importance of the project also lies in huge number of stakeholders participating in the implementation, and that all sorts of information were available to entrepreneurs. In addition, they were all also able to participate in interesting training sessions where their business ideas were discussed, even with those coming from underdeveloped communities. “This project has more meanings than it appears because economic space of BiH is still divided and we are making major efforts to overcome this and to help economic development and establishment of new enterprises through support of good business ideas.”, concluded Mr. Okerić.
About Project
The EU TAC project was implemented in the period January 2006 – October 2008 and its main goal was to improve business performance and competitiveness of SMEs, start-ups and local economic service providers in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The total value of the project was 1.5 million euro and it was funded from CARDS 2005 under the EU Support for Regional Economic Development Fund. It was implemented by the project consortium lead by a German agency InWEnt in cooperation with B&H partners Izbor Plus, Association of CEFE Trainers to B&H and EDA.
More information available at EU TAC website: www.eutac.eu
