The OECD has organised the second workshop of its project on 'Improving business statistics in Ukraine', with a focus on SME financing indicators. The project is part of the EU-funded regional programme ‘EU4Business: from Policies to Action’.
The purpose of the workshop – held on 30 May 2018 in Kyiv – wasto support Ukrainian institutions, in particular the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and the Ukrainian State Statistics Service (Ukrstat), in collecting, analysing and disseminating official statistics in the area of SME financing, thus contributing to the broader efforts undertaken by the Ukrainian government to promote evidence-based SME policy development.
Kris Boschmans, senior expert from the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities focused the workshop on the methodology to compile core indicators of SME financing. He presented the OECD Scoreboard on Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs as the main methodological reference, which documents the state of access to finance for entrepreneurs and SMEs and annually monitors trends in 43 OECD and non-OECD countries.
The workshop was attended by key stakeholders involved in the production and use of business and SME financing statistics, including the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the Cabinet of Ministers, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the National Bank of Ukraine.
The discussion revolved around core indicators of SME financing, data sources and data comparability, good practices for data collection and dessimination.
The need to enhance the quality of SME statistics has been highlighted by the latest Small Business Act for Europe (SBA) assessment as a main priority to improve the institutional framework for SME support in Ukraine. Building on this finding, the project aims to promote the implementation of an established methodology to compile key indicators of business statistics that are internationally comparable, and increase capacity among Ukrainian policymakers to collect, harmonise, analyse, publish and disseminate official information measuring the performance of the SME sector in Ukraine.