Export Promotion in Greece

Project description

Title: Export Promotion Plus in Greece
Commissioned by: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and DG Reform of the European Commission (EC)
Country: Greece
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic
Overall term: 2019 to 2020

Context

After a long period of economic recession, the Greek economy is looking for driving forces that will lead to an increase in sustainable economic growth. Among these driving forces, exports are considered a major factor to support growth.

The Greek economy for years has been characterised by a low degree of openness to international competition. This is attributed mainly to the low level of diversification of the country’s production and its exports’ composition, and the narrow export base, in terms of number, size, specialisation and financial literacy of enterprises active in international trade.

Greece underperforms in comparison to its potential as identified by international institutions, and improvements in terms of addressing institutional inflexibilities and the building of capacities are necessary.

Objective

The support of the state for the increase of exports of goods and services from Greece is improved.

Approach

Following up on progress made by the on-going implementation of the “Export Promotion Action Plan 2016-2018”, the “Export Promotion Plus” technical support project focuses on

  • Building enhanced market and business intelligence capacity to support strategic planning.
  • Supporting the authorities to provide improved services on transferring export related know-how at a regional level and support to address gaps and challenges in the existing role and operations of the National export credit insurance
  • Supporting the alignment of export related reforms to new strategic objectives and structures

 
The technical support will be provided to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the national export promotion agency Enterprise Greece.

The project aims to support coherent strategic planning by the Greek partners by improving market intelligence on understanding and prioritising export markets. Guidelines for strategic planning regarding the penetration of export target markets will be deducted with the help of preparing two case studies, which shall describe processes and measures of state support for a market entry and/or the increase of market shares.

The project furthermore supports the Greek authorities to empower the transfer of export promotion related know-how at a regional level. The focus lies on the improvement of public services which are offered to currently exporting enterprises or possible future exporters, and the improvement of their export-related know-how. The aim is to foster export-oriented entrepreneurship, to incentivise more enterprises to export and to broaden the composition and specialisation of exported goods and services.

The project supports addressing gaps and challenges in the existing role and operations of the National export credit insurance organisation and will provide proposals with a view to increase its effectiveness, e.g. to thematic fields like the organisation’s visibility to exporters, the efficient and effective use of available financial resources. The proposals will include a review of existing EU and national framework for trade finance and export credit insurance instruments, the progress made related to the setup of a Greek National Development Bank, the expectations of the private sector and lessons learned from EU good practices.

Results

The project builds on the results achieved in the previous project phase.

  • the development of an Information System for exporters,
  • the establishment of a Help-Desk for exporters within Enterprise Greece, thus enhancing the capacity of export-related public services,
  • the development of a methodology to identify export potential at country-level, thus facilitating policy makers in long-term planning,
  • introducing vocational education and training programmes, with a view to provide capacity building and consultation/advisory support to exporting companies and
  • the establishment of a coordination framework to support strategy planning, stakeholder coordination and efficient implementation of export promotion activities.