SME Policy Effectiveness in Jordan User Guides

 

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs have the potential to become important drivers of change and development in Jordan. Private businesses employing one to nineteen people account for over half of employment in the business economy and from 70 to 80% of jobs in sectors such as professional services, real estate, and wholesale and retail. Yet, the productivity and performance of Jordanian SMEs is limited.  

 

The project “SME Policy Effectiveness in Jordan”, implemented by the OECD and the Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation from 2016-19 worked to improve SME and entrepreneurship policy making by reinforcing institutional co-ordination and dialogue, advocating better monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes, and identifying ways to improve business and entrepreneurship statistics. Three User Guides are the main outputs of the project:

 

User Guide 1: Reinforcing SME policy co-ordination and public-private dialogue gives guidance on how to orchestrate efforts among the many actors providing SME support
User Guide 2: Effective monitoring and evaluation of SME and entrepreneurship policies and programmes provides advice on how to assess the impact of SME support
User Guide 3: SME statistics and entrepreneurship indicators offers useful guidance on how to improve the evidence base for SME policy making

 

The User Guides build on international practice and provide concrete areas of action for Jordan, but can also be of interest to other countries wanting to improve the effectiveness of their SME policy making.

 

The project was funded by the MENA Transition Fund and was implemented jointly by the Global Relations Secretariat through the MENA-OECD Competitiveness Programme; the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities; and the Statistics and Data Directorate of the OECD.