November 24 (SeeNews) - Serbia needs to increase predictability in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business and administrative environment by developing performance measurements for policy-making activities, the European Commission (EC) said.
Serbia needs to assess the negative impact of widespread but unpredictable parafiscal charges on SMEs and to perform systematically a regulatory impact assessment when making laws and bylaws, the EC said in a report reviewing the performance of SMEs in EU member states and several candidate countries.
An additional improvement of access to finance is needed to revitalise Serbian SMEs, as currently, they are mainly using their own resources to fund expansion, the EC said.
Serbia made some progress in implementing the Small Business Act for Europe (SBA), most notably by further strengthening support for entrepreneurship by organising a comprehensive policy initiative entitled ‘The Year of Entrepreneurship 2016.’ The measures adopted during this initiative continue to be implemented in 2017, the EC noted.
Since 2008, every SBA area benefited from some kind of policy measure, but the results on average remain below the EU levels. Implementing policies effectively is key to further progress. To achieve this, policy measures need to be continually analysed and action plans need to be fully implemented to further improve the environment for SMEs.
The importance of SMEs for the economy has increased with the country’s economic recovery. In 2016, only employment in the SME sector stayed below the respective pre-crisis levels (2008) which point to increased efficiencies and productivity within SMEs. As Serbia’s economy continues growing by forecast 2% in 2017, SMEs are expected to contribute to and continue benefiting from this economic upswing, the EC also said.