Background
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) represent just 6% of the region's exports, yet they constitute 99% of the number of formal businesses and two thirds of employment. This partly reflects the low productivity of these companies and their difficulty in overcoming different obstacles to export, beyond the challenge of accessing credit.
Trade Promotion Organizations (TPOs) are the main responsible for supporting SMEs in their internationalization process. To do this, they offer various services and carry out different activities to help exporters access international markets. For the delivery of their services, TPOs increasingly use different digital platforms.
Another key mechanism to facilitate the internationalization of SMEs is the Single Windows for Foreign Trade (SWs), which have been implemented in 22 countries in the region. In some countries, there is a recent trend towards taking advantage of this tool to support and / or complement government initiatives or programs that help the internationalization of SMEs.
The CORPYME project seeks to promote the aforementioned trends through a more intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and paperless trade. This project is an initiative of the government of the Republic of Korea and is being implemented by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) for the member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
Objectives
In 2020, the CORPYME project seeks to promote the use of digital platforms to strengthen the work of TPOs and SWs as a mechanism to accelerate the internationalization of SMEs in LAC and Korea. For this purpose, it is proposed to organize a webinar for the TPOs and SWs technicians with the following objectives:
Preliminary agenda
Day 1 - September 24 (Chile time)
10:00 - 10:20 Opening
10:20 - 10:30 CORPYME 2020: goals and activities
Nanno Mulder, Head of the International Trade Unit, ECLAC
SESSION 1 Digital platforms for trade promotion
10:30 - 10:50 Experience on digital platforms in Korean TPOs
Joonho Lee, Korea Small Business Research Institute (KSBRI)
10:50 - 11:10 Experience on digital platforms in the TPOs of some Latin American countries
Lorena Veiga, consultant
11:10 - 11:30 Questions and answers
11:30 - 11:45 Good practices of some countries in the region
11:45 - 12:15 Breakout group session: which instruments are missing in the TPOs and SWs? Each group, which includes representatives from TPOs and SWs, discusses which possible new digital instruments -and their interconnection- could promote the internationalization of SMEs.
12:15 - 12:30 Short group presentations
Day 2 - September 29
SESSION 2 SWs AND OTHER DIGITAL INSTRUMENTS FOR THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF SMEs
10:00 - 10:10 Results of the first day
Nanno Mulder, Head of the International Trade Unit, ECLAC
10:10 - 10:30 Korean Experience
Joonho Lee, Korea Small Business Research Institute (KSBRI)
10:30 - 11:15 Good practices from 3 countries in the region
11:15 - 12:00 Group work: How to enhance collaboration between TPOs and SWs? Each group, which includes representatives from TPOs and SWs, discusses how to enhance collaboration between both institutions to promote the internationalization of SMEs.
12:00 - 12:30 Group work presentations
12:30 - 12:40 Presentation of online course on “Towards a digital infrastructure for the internationalization of SMEs”
Lorena Veiga, consultant
12:40 - 12:45 Closing remarks and next steps
Keiji Inoue, Senior economic affairs officer, International Trade and Integration Division, ECLAC
Press Release
Press Release
Press Release
