In the Southern Mediterranean region, Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises represent nearly 95% of all registered companies and are major job providers and economic value generators. However, their prominent role in the region´s economy remain an issue, MSMEs continue to be a vulnerable segment as they have been facing pressing challenges such as lack of access to finance, limited digitalization, barriers to access to international markets, skills mismatch, among others. These challenges have been unfortunately accentuated by the negative fallout of the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis. It is in this context that the Union for the Mediterranean Secretariat organized in Nicosia on 6 and 7 October 2022 a Conference “Enhancing SMEs resilience in face of future shocks” The Conference aimed to support MSMES as generators of decent job opportunities, in line with the Southern Neighbourhood Regional Team Europe Initiative. Giovanni Zazzerini, Secretary General of INSME, attended the event as a speaker which gathered experts working in the field of SMEs to discuss how to best support SMEs during crises and funding towards a twin transition as the intertwined crises – the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Ukrainian war – are having a knock-out effect on SMEs: already leveraged SMEs are feeling the joint effects of soaring energy and raw materials prices, strong inflation, high interest rate, disruptions in the supply chain, all expected to bring insolvency problems.
Find out more about the past event at the following link: https://ufmsecretariat.org/event/conference-enhancing-msmes-resilience/
Source: INSME Secretariat
