Recommendations and implementation action plan for Georgia in the policy area of Digital innovation SMEs’ access to finance

These are the key documents – the list of recommendations and implementation action plan – for Georgia in the policy area of Digital innovation SMEs’ access to finance.

In 2019-early 2020, the EU4Digital Facility provided support for the six Eastern partner countries with recommendations for national policy instruments in selected priority policy areas of ICT innovation.

The selected policy areas were:

• Intellectual property rights management for digital innovations (Armenia);
• New organisational forms in support of ICT Innovation (Azerbaijan);
• Digital innovation SMEs’ access to finance (Georgia, Ukraine);
• ICT innovation ecosystems for start-ups and scale-ups (Republic of Moldova);
• Digitising industry (digital transformation of SMEs in traditional sectors) (Belarus).

For each of these areas, the Facility has studied the best EU practices, undertaken the gap analysis in each country and developed recommendations that identify specific EU tools, platforms, and practices that can be mastered by Eastern Neighbourhood country stakeholders. The Facility had also collected the list of over 200 EU organisations with advanced practices of innovation policy implementation, which are advised to be considered as potential partners for collaboration by Eastern partner countries.

Following this analysis, the final work of the Facility resulted in six national action plans that set a basis for further implementation through nationally funded or EU-supported projects. The action plans noted the stakeholders interested to take the leading role as an owner of particular actions or be part of the team on their implementation. The actual status of the proposed actions, the indicative timeline for implementation and approach for implementation based on EU practices are also identified in the action plans. These action plans were aligned and broadly discussed with country stakeholder communities during country consultations in May-June 2020.

The set of documents for Georgia in the policy area of Digital innovation SMEs’ access to finance includes:

• Policy recommendations: best EU practices and examples in the selected policy area, gaps identified and list of recommendations to close the existing gaps and stimulating EaP regional cooperation and harmonisation with the EU.
• Policy recommendations summary: 2-page summary of policy recommendations with key EU practices, list of gaps identified and list of key recommendations.
• Implementation action plan: list of key recommendations and actions, preliminary leading and contributing organisations interested in implementation, indicative timeline.

Policy recommendations and implementation actions plans for other Eastern partner countries can be found here.