Brussels, 05/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Investment Bank (EIB) will host a conference in Tunis on 8 March on support for business. The event will be attended by Commission Vice President with responsibility for Industry and Entrepreneurship Antonio Tajani and Tunisian Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Riadh Bettaieb. The theme of the conference will be Mediterranean SMEs as drivers of growth and employment, a topic at the heart of the work of the Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership (FEMIP).
The theme of the conference responds to the expectations of the people for stronger and more fairly shared growth, said EIB Vice-President Philippe de Fontaine Vive. He added that, for 10 years, FEMIP, which brings together the whole range of services provided by the EIB to assist the economic development and the integration of the Mediterranean partner countries, has made private sector development an economic and social priority. Small and medium-sized enterprises, including micro-companies, make up the largest part of the economic fabric and are key to growth and job creation, he said.
The conference will focus particularly on small businesses' access to finance, improving their capacity and boosting their competitiveness.
De Fontaine Vive highlighted three major challenges: the first is improving and diversifying the financial services for small business which is still finding it difficult to get credit. He said, too, that the non-banking financial sector was still at the embryonic stage. FEMIP would, then, be helping to broaden and modernise local financial sectors. It also supports, by means of loans and shares, micro-finance bodies and investment and venture capital funds, he said. The second challenge is promoting entrepreneurship and managerial and technical training for entrepreneurs, including local financial institutions. The final challenge is to enhance the international competitiveness of companies. To become more competitive they must innovate and improve their production and distribution methods.
A major source of jobs is in electronics, which would contribute to the emergence of a vast Euro-Mediterranean consumer market, de Fontaine Vive said. (FB/transl.rt)