Last week advisors of the Development Agency of Serbia (RAS) had an opportunity to present the Supplier Development Program of RAS and to share experience from the implementation process of the Program with their colleagues from the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The  RAS online presentation was held for the representatives of the small and medium-sized enterprises from Kazakhstan and representatives of the industry and export center „KazIndustri“. The presentation had a focus on the goals and implementation steps of the Serbian Supplier Development Program, which RAS has been implementing since 2019.

The Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan is implementing a similar program, called „SDPK - Supplier Development Project in Kazakhstan“ with a consultant company Euroconsultants S.A, and partners JSC „KazIndustri “ and NCE RK „Atameken “.

The aim of the Program in Kazahstan is to improve the competitiveness of the SMEs in this country, especially companies from the gas and oil industry as well as from the metallurgy and mining industry. The main objective is to strengthen their position in supply chains and expand links between SMEs and large domestic and international corporations present in Kazakhstan. Similar to the RAS Supplier Development Program, the idea of the Program is to give support to domestic companies in order to enable them to become a certified supplier for large multinational companies and to become a part of the international value chains.

Some of the regular activities of SDPK project is organizing the online B2B meetings for the metal processing sector „Meet The Buyer“ and also arranging the study tours. In January 2021, this B2B event gathered around 180 companies, out of which 12 from Serbia.

From 25 to 29 January Serbian companies from the metal processing industry presented themselves to the potential partners in Kazakhstan. Companies that participated already are  suppliers of some multinational companies, and some of them have been a part of the Programs which included EFQM methodology. Some of the Serbian companies that took a part in B2B meetings are “FIMA” from Mionica, “Perform” from Požega, “Unipromet” from Čačak, “IVA 28” from Obrenovac, etc.