The project strengthened the capacities of Ukrainian business organisations and associations by providing support to private sustainable enterprises within a regional and sector based scope.

The SME support project had the following overall objectives:

• Helping to develop a policy environment supportive to SME growth. The project contributed to the development of the administrative environment and culture in charge of the rise of the SME sector in Oblasts, where support is specially lacking;
• Stimulate business consultancy advice for SMEs and stimulate the growth of the business consultancy sector with the aim of introducing innovative SME support tools;
• Strengthening existing facilities including training access to SME finance (credit and venture capital), comparative benchmarking of SMEs and awareness of the cluster approach.

The target groups included SME owners, managers and employees; associations of entrepreneurs and consultants; civil servants; policy makers at legislative level and government top executives; research institutions and “think-tanks”. Students, trainers and university teachers were also carefully associated to this initiative to bring about better qualified entrepreneurs.

The regional activities concentrated on three Oblasts that were considered as less assisted for SME development: Rivne, Zhytomir and Chernihiv.