The Swiss-Ukrainian project Ukraine’s Cohesion and Regional Development and the Office for Entrepreneurship and Export Development have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. The partnership aims to strengthen regional entrepreneurial ecosystems and enhance the export readiness of small and medium-sized businesses in the six UCORD partner regions.
The cooperation involves combining the expertise, resources, and institutional capacities of both parties to foster regional economic development and unlock export potential. Regional development agencies will play a central role in this effort, serving as an institutional platform to coordinate between the public and private sectors, strengthen entrepreneurship support organizations, and implement targeted tools to support export-oriented companies.
Key areas of joint collaboration include:
- Strengthening the institutional capacity of regional development agencies in export advisory services
- Organising joint informational, training, and promotional activities to enhance regional export potential
- Disseminating and systematising information on national export support tools
- Establishing and reinforcing regional mechanisms to coordinate support for SMEs and exporters
- Assessing the needs of small and medium-sized businesses and mapping regional export potential
- Developing and supporting sectoral export clusters
Collaborating with the UCORD project will enhance the capacity of regional development agencies as dialogue platforms for business growth, scale up export support at the regional level, and combine state instruments with international expertise and practical territorial development experience. As a result, regional businesses will gain new opportunities for growth, clearer pathways to access foreign markets, and exports will become a systematic tool for regional economic development.
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The Office for Entrepreneurship and Export Development was established on the basis of the Ukraine Export Promotion Office, which has been operating successfully since 2015 and whose effectiveness has been recognised both nationally and by international partners. Together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the Office for Entrepreneurship and Export Development develops the national Diia.Business project.