The Entrepreneurship Forum

Project Coordinator : Zvonko Brnjas , Ph. D.

The development of small and medium enterprises (SME) has received a lot of attention from the very establishment of EMinS; from the moment Serbia started opening to the world, economic development and the revitalisation of the economy have taken priority over politics.

RESEARCH INTO THE STATE OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN SERBIA has been conducted continuously; the results have been presented in international conferences and have been used by a number of domestic and foreign experts as points of reference in this area - The Recent Experience of SMEs in Serbia, The SME Financing in Serbia, (for more details, see the Web Sites of Bari University and www.emins.org ).

PROMOTION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP aimed at organizing gatherings varying in form and content within the framework of workshops dedicated to larger social issues or independently:

WORKSHOP: DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP held in 15 Serbian towns. The workshops included the promotion of a newly-established institution, the Euro Info Correspondence Centre , a credit line of the European Agency for Reconstruction, as well as the preparation and drawing up of business plans. Nine workshops have been held so far ( Novi Sad , Užice, Bor, Niš, Leskovac, Kovin, Kruševac, Požarevac and Čačak) with over 700 participants, including representatives of business, local authorities, chambers of commerce, NGOs, researchers and others.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME - The programme entitled "Training entrepreneurship instructors" is under way, in cooperation with GEA COLLAGE from Ljubljana and the Institute of Economic Sciences from Belgrade . Of the 5 planned one-week modules, the first three have been held in Belgrade and the remaining two will be held in Slovenia and some European country. Within the framework of this project, the Entrepreneurship Forum of EMinS has selected prospective trainers and participated in the formulation and implementation of training units. Moreover, the third module, dedicated to the preparation of business plans, was based on the book How to Prepare a Business Plan by Zvonko Brnjas , Ph. D., (co-published by EMinS).

DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES - the Entrepreneurship Forum actively participates in the realization of various programmes supporting SME in Serbia . The initiative for establishing the first Euro Info Correspondence Centre in Serbia (the only official EU information network for supporting SME) presupposed a public campaign, professional promotion through workshops with the Federal Chamber of Commerce, cooperation with Euro Info centres in Romania and Hungary, and the formal establishment of the Centre with the participation of 12 domestic subjects (chambers of commerce, banks, companies and EMinS), officially scheduled to start work in April 2002.