The Economic Development practice started its activities at the beginning of the nineties in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and was principally focused on private sector development. We implemented private sector development and SME support programmes in many countries and worked both at the policy level and at the company level undertaking enterprise privatization and restructuring as well as export promotion activities.
Eurecna is closely linked with CNA being a spin-off from its Veneto branch. CNA is Europe's largest voluntary association of craft, small and medium sized enterprises. Over 8,000 CNA staff work in 1152 offices throughout Italy providing a broad range of services to member firms. CNA is at the centre of cluster development, innovative financial arrangements and product innovation on which Italy's growth through business entrepreneurship is based.
Building on this experience Eurecna soon started looking at a bigger picture and we have undertaken work in the labour market and TVET sectors with the double objective of fighting unemployment on the one side and giving to companies the right skills to grow and become more competitive on the other. In 2000 we started working in the regional and local development sector providing advisory service to set up regional and local development agencies and to build the capacity to undertake participatory planning for regional and local development strategies.
Our peculiarity is that we bring the private and the public perspectives together to the benefit of the country where we work and to its citizens. We work with public officers to take into account the interests of the private sector in their planning exercises not as a way to surrender to individual interests but as a way to build the best conditions for the private sector to grow thus contributing to social and economic development. Among the various types of activities implemented we can mention our work to put in place the right infrastructure for supporting SME development, the facilitation of public-private partnership projects as well as the creation of networks of business service providers and the mechanism to promote self employment and youth entrepreneurship.
Depending on the country where we work we like to chose in partnership with the project beneficiaries the right best practices to get inspiration from. We have exported and adapted the model of Italian guarantee funds where SMEs were facing credit constraints and have promoted the experience of cooperatives in very poor countries where locally driven initiatives are the only way to fight exclusion and marginalization.
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