Georgia: EaP National Stakeholder Meeting

Overview

The current global health crisis is creating unprecedented challenges for institutions and businesses around the world, as governments try to protect vulnerable populations and mitigate the economic and social consequences of lockdowns and supply chain disruptions. At the same time, trade support initiatives to help empower small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are becoming critical as firms seek to diversify their markets, keep their supply chains moving and adapt to shifting market conditions.

In this context, the EU-funded Eastern Partnership (EaP) Trade Helpdesk project aims at boosting exports in the EaP region and to the EU by increasing transparency of information and increasing regional expertise at identifying export opportunities and identifying trade obstacles across EaP countries.

The project includes the following components:

• Bridging information gaps: through creating an online platform, the project will support the collection and dissemination of information on market opportunities and conditions to help companies take strategic business decisions and realize their growth potential;
• Establishing a regional network that will enable institutions to respond to company inquiries;
• Documenting business experience through structured business surveys of non-tariff measures (regulatory, procedural);
• Strengthening the data management capacity of relevant national institutions to process and disseminate trade in services statistics; and
• Building the capacity of business support organisations to use the EaP Trade Helpdesk portal to identify export opportunities in the region and in EU markets.