On March 1, 2023, the public-private reconciliation meeting on Small Business Act for Europe (SBA) Assessment, organized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization of the Republic of Moldova took place. The initial findings of the 2024 SBA Assessment were presented at the event. The purpose of the SBA assessment is to improve the SME policy-making process in the Eastern Partnership countries and to enhance the capacity of decision-makers.

The scientific researchers from the National Institute for Economic Research (Vinogradova N., Novac A., Maier L.) participated in the SBA evaluation for the Eastern Partnership countries, being involved in the evaluation of the "Entrepreneurial human capital" and "Innovations" Pillars of the OECD SBA Assessment Questionnaire 2022-23, the data of which will be used to calculate the SME Policy Index 2024. Some results of the entrepreneurs' survey, obtained in 2022 within the Applied Scientific Project  20.80009.0807.38 "Multidimensional assessment and development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at national and regional level in order to boost the SME sector in the Republic of Moldova" (project director - dr. N.Vinogradova) were also presented at the reconciliation meeting. In particular, there were reflected the problems of enterprises, related to the low level of digitization, poorly developed cooperation for the purpose of developing/implementing innovations; the problems of entrepreneurial education and the obstacles in the involvement of young people in entrepreneurial activities.

The results of the evaluation will allow the comparison of SME development policy between partner countries and with EU members, the efficiency increasing of the SME policy development process, as well as institutional improvement.