Project assistance completion report (PACR) : ASEAN small and medium business improvement

The project increased interest in SME development and was a great source of information for the new Private Investment and Trade Opportunities project (3980361). Activities were implemented by 4 agencies. (1) Technonet provided 20 technical workshops, 9 workshops combined with consultancies, 2 symposia, and 128 person-months of consultancy service to over 2,000 workshop participants. (2) The U.S.-ASEAN Center for Technology Exchange conducted country seminars for about 3,300 participants and organized technical missions to explore joint ventures with U.S. firms and to study U.S. technology. (3) The Asian Institute of Management completed 65 case studies and provided 7 short courses on case writing, marketing, finance, and production. (4) The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies published national studies on financial, marketing, and production management. Several lessons were learned. (1) A regional approach for SME development is cost-effective, since the same consultants and other inputs are used to serve several countries. (2) NGO's can provide better service at a lower cost than government agencies. (3) SME's can gain more benefit from consultancies, demonstrations, plant visits, and interaction with other SME's than from formal classroom sessions. (4) The case method is a preferred way to teach general business principles to SME's and is a sound development investment. (5) Networking and information exchange have potential for optimizing results of country investments in SME assistance. (6) Individual country workshops are preferable to regional workshops due to the high costs and language difficulties connected with the latter. (7) The policy-relevant findings of individual project studies should be consolidated and disseminated.