The Workshop had more than 40 participants from Government agencies and Chambers of Commerce and Industry of 18 Asian participating countries with the purpose to find out development strategies, solutions and initiatives in order to improve current relations between Chambers of Commerce and Industry with SMEs.
At the Workshop, the participants not only discussed on experience in supporting their SMEs but also discussed about cooperation development strategies of Government agencies, Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the countries for promoting the SME development.
When the Workshop concluded, the participants agreed on some specific activities as follows:
- Supporting Chambers of Commerce and Industry to access to international funding sources;
- Identifying some common demands and training fields of the countries;
- Working out appropriate policies to support SMEs;
- Creating favorable conditions for Chambers of Commerce and Industry to sue information technology and communications;
- Establishing a South – South network to share information of market and technology in order to promote SME development;
- Proposing a model development module called GEMS (Growth Enterprise Market System). Based on this model module, TECHNONET – ASIA Network will be re-launched. This is the network of technology transfer of Asian countries, which has been established since 1975.
The Vietnamese delegation participating in this Workshop was representatives from the National Agency for Science and Technology Information (NASATI) and Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). At the Workshop, the Vietnamese delegation had a report on experience in supporting SMEs through cooperation activities between NASATI with VCCI as organizing workshops on disseminating technology information, technology forum, linking technology supply and demands among scientists and SMEs, promoting activities of transferring S&T research results, sharing supporting policies of Vietnamese Government which have just been issued to support SMEs to overcome difficulties of the economic recession, at the same time proposing joint cooperation activities in Asian countries as sharing information, developing markets and human resource and transferring technology.