That is a key finding of a study I conducted of 10 regions participating in the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation, an effort designed to advance a new model of economic development that promises better results for more people and communities.

A defining feature of the skills development systems that are emerging in those 10 regions is they are demand driven. That is, they start with the hiring and skills needs of area businesses, then mobilize education and training providers to more effectively meet those needs. That approach is a departure from traditional workforce development programs that have focused primarily on the supply side, helping certain disadvantaged groups get a foothold in the labor market.

Another defining feature of the emerging systems is that they are tailored to the needs of the regional economy and deeply anchored in relationships with actual employers, rather than designed to meet the narrow guidelines and funding constraints of public training programs.

Although the workforce development field has been moving in this direction for the past decade, early sector-based programs had difficulty getting and keeping business-led organizations actively engaged in those efforts. That appears to be changing as business-led regional partnerships confront skills gaps and shortages in the sectors targeted in their regional growth strategies, spawning a new wave of sector-based, skills development initiatives and intermediaries.

For example, a key element of World Business Chicago’s Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs is the new intermediary organization, Skills for Chicagoland’s Future, designed to provide leadership to the region’s emerging demand-driven skills development system.

Similarly, the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce is the key component of a regional growth strategy developed by a partnership of government, business, economic development, and civic leaders in Memphis. This homegrown effort, now just getting off the ground, has secured over $10 million in combined private sector, state, and federal funding to strengthen the pipeline of workers to meet the needs of employers in key sectors. 

In Kentucky, the focus on manufacturing that formed the basis for the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement, a regional partnership between Louisville and Lexington, prompted the creation of the Kentucky Manufacturing Career Center, as well as a new apprenticeship model in KY FAME. The Manufacturing Career Center, overseen by over two dozen area manufacturing companies, is designed to create a pipeline of skilled manufacturing workers to support this strategic sector and has placed over 500 workers in two years of operation.

In Syracuse NY, business-led CenterState CEO has joined forces with the philanthropic community, city and county government, education institutions, community-based organizations, and workforce agencies to establish Work Train as a platform for a demand-driven skills development system. Work Train builds on pilot efforts conducted by CenterState CEO over the past five years, and is part of their comprehensive approach to economic development that integrates business, workforce, and community development in ways that expand opportunity for all.

Other regions are putting similar demand-driven intermediaries in place. And their efforts are now getting a boost from the federal government through the Communities That Work Partnership, designed to improve the effectiveness and accelerate the expansion of these efforts. Participating regions will receive strategic and technical assistance from leaders of peer organizations and from national experts in economic, workforce, and talent development.

Over time, as these new intermediaries mature, they will play an increasingly important role in growing the regional economy, expanding opportunity across the board.

      

 

 

That is a key finding of a study I conducted of 10 regions participating in the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation, an effort designed to deploy a new model of economic development that promises better results for more people and communities.

An important backdrop for that finding is that inclusive regional economic growth doesn’t happen on its own. Somebody has to bring together key stakeholders across program and jurisdictional boundaries, develop a common plan, and oversee implementation through a network of partnering organizations. In the regions I studied, the individuals best equipped to perform those core leadership functions came from many different kinds of organizations, but business leaders were particularly important since it has proven to be difficult to implement economic growth strategies without their active engagement.

In the past, CEOs of large regional corporations, banks, and utilities embraced this role. But globalization has shifted CEOs’ focus outside their home regions, and mergers and acquisitions have thinned their ranks and shortened their tenure in any one region. As a result, the pool of high-level corporate leadership available to participate in regional partnerships is shallower, more transient, and less influential than in the past.

Fortunately, there are some innovative efforts under way to develop the next generation of regional civic leaders from the business community. Those efforts focus on educating mid-level executives about the regional economy and plans for growth, engaging them in carrying out those plans, and building their capacity to sustain and expand this vital work as their own careers advance.

For example, Kansas City Tomorrow, a civic engagement program sponsored by the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City (a regional CEO organization), is closely tied to Kansas City Rising, the region’s economic growth strategy, and the program’s curriculum is structured around priority opportunities and challenges identified in that strategy. In addition, the more than 500 members of the KC Tomorrow Alumni Association represent a network of business leaders available for roles in carrying out that strategy.

World Business Chicago forges an even stronger link between leadership development and its regional growth strategy through its fellowship program, which provides an opportunity for mid-level business executives to spend four to six months on loan from their firms to help implement the Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs. Using an apprenticeship model, each fellow is assigned to a particular initiative, and is responsible for conducting background research, developing a business plan, recruiting partners, and overseeing the execution of that plan. Fellows also participate in strategy sessions and steering committee meetings for the plan as a whole.

In Northeast Ohio, the focus is on helping civic leaders develop and practice the unique skills that collaborative civic leadership requires. The Fund for Our Economic Future, Leadership Akron, and Leadership Cleveland have developed a curriculum that focuses on how to build partnerships that reach across organizational and sector boundaries, how to catalyze action and promote accountability without hierarchical authority, and how to navigate through complex and dynamic environments. All of those activities require leadership skills built on trust and often require being willing to admit “I don’t know, but let’s find out.”

Taken together, these innovative efforts offer a new model that could be taken to scale by the myriad of leadership development programs that currently operate in cities across the United States, providing a solid platform for cultivating new cadres of business-civic leaders. 

      

 

 

That is a key finding of a study of 10 regions participating in the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation, an effort designed to advance a new model of economic development that achieves better results for more people and communities.

In those 10 regions, the disconnect between short-term, programmatic funding and the need for long-term, systemic change is creating a predicament for regional partnerships, forcing them to cobble together enough short-term grants to keep their innovative efforts going long enough to make a lasting difference. Their heavy reliance on grant funding is also making it difficult to retain core staff, who are critical to holding the pieces together and keeping the work moving in the right direction.

The United Kingdom encountered this same problem several years ago with their Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), which are responsible for providing strategic leadership to their regional economic development efforts. Initially, the LEPs were told that they would have to raise money locally from the private sector to fund their operations. However, their efforts to raise money from the private sector were largely unsuccessful, and most LEPs ended up living from government grant to government grant, with wide variation in funding and capacity across regions.

Last year, an independent review by the Smith Institute found that, after being in existence for several years, the LEPs still had limited effectiveness due to insufficient funding, too broad a focus (from chasing too many grants), and too much reliance on volunteers to carry out the work. Very similar to what’s happening in the United States.

In response to this and other reports, the government in the U.K. ultimately decided to make £250,000 in core funding available to each LEP annually by pooling funds across federal departments.

Doing something similar in the United States could greatly strengthen, sustain, and expand the innovative economic development efforts currently under way. However, new federal funding for regional partnerships is unlikely, given the current political environment in Washington, so regional partnerships are largely left to fend for themselves.

The regions participating in the Brookings project are taking or considering a number of different approaches to securing core funding.

The most common approach is to house their core functions and staff in a chamber of commerce or economic development organization that has strong, stable support from private sector members, along with a willingness to redirect some of that revenue stream to innovative approaches.

However, those efforts often come up short of what’s needed, particularly when trying to expand the work. So, another approach is to pool funds across several organizations to support core staff. For example, in Des Moines, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines, the United Way of Central Iowa, and the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization are collectively funding core staff to implement the region’s growth strategy, Capital Crossroads. That has the benefit of sharing the cost, while simultaneously building broader ownership of the work.

A third approach is to pool funds from local foundations, similar to what the Fund for Our Economic Future does in Northeast Ohio. Formed in 2004, the fund has raised more than $100 million in patient capital from local foundations, most of which has gone to support the operations of regional intermediaries focused on promoting economic growth and opportunity. A number of other regions are looking at doing something similar.

Ultimately, however, it will be necessary to tap into larger streams of existing funding to take the current work to scale. A good place to start would be with the estimated $80 billion that state and local governments spend annually on incentives to attract and retain businesses, despite questionable short-term benefit and possible long-term harm to the communities involved.

      

 

 

That is a key finding of a study of 10 regions participating in the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation, an effort designed to advance a new model of economic development that achieves better results for more people and communities.

The 10 sites that were the focus of the study offer a microcosm of the dynamics that play out across all regions when they attempt to transform their economies.

One of those dynamics is that things don’t always go as planned, and planned initiatives often get superseded by other priorities or opportunities. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, for example, the lead initiative to stimulate the ecosystem for new firms ended up taking a back seat to other equally ambitious initiatives focused on ensuring broader prosperity and equity.

In Syracuse, work on an exciting new economic cluster, “Data to Decisions” technologies, has ramped up more slowly than anticipated as other opportunities have attracted more interest and resources.

In some cases, the work has gone well beyond the original plan. Partnerships forged through the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (BEAM) have led to the creation of a network of manufacturers who are developing paid apprenticeships—a more ambitious undertaking than their original plan. In Chicago, World Business Chicago has launched 15 initiatives since its “Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs” was completed in 2011 and has 20 more in the pipeline.

Another dynamic is that plans are often superseded by other plans, involving many of the same people and focused on many of the same issues. In fact, most regions can point to a whole series of plans they have developed over the years to guide their efforts to grow the economy.

That raises the question: if things don’t always go as planned, and new plans are always coming along, is it worth the trouble? The answer appears to be yes.

If done well, each iteration of planning lays the foundation for the next iteration in several important ways. First, it dispels myths and deepens people’s understanding of how their regional economy actually works. In the regions that participated in the Brookings project, for example, the focus on investing in what matters—regional strengths and assets in the key economic drivers of trade, innovation, and talent—has carried over as the foundation for new strategies and initiatives.

Second, each iteration uncovers new opportunities for growth and development. For example, the Puget Sound Regional Council’s closer examination of regional assets in Greater Seattle turned up a new and important opportunity in the clean energy sector that the region is now pursuing.

And finally, each iteration builds collaborative capacity within the region, getting key stakeholders moving in the same direction and forging relationships based on mutual trust and respect. This last point is critical, since as one regional leader has put it, “Collaboration moves forward at the speed of trust.”

In the regions that participated in the Brookings project, the planning process often brought together key stakeholders who had never worked together or focused on regional issues before. In many cases, those key stakeholders have since gone on to spawn new initiatives together that go beyond the original plan.

The bottom line is that no single plan can hope to capture everything that’s going on in a regional economy. And transforming a regional economy can’t happen overnight, or in the course of a single project. It is an iterative process that unfolds in often unpredictable ways over many years, with each intervention creating cumulative ripple effects across the region and over time.

      

 

 

The lessons from these efforts, documented in a monitoring and evaluation report that focuses on 10 of these regions, are compelling and should help inform economic developers in the public, private, and civic sectors across the country.

Together, they show evidence of a national movement toward a new model of economic development designed to build a globally competitive advanced economy that works for all.

Ten years ago, most regional economic development partnerships focused primarily on regional branding and marketing to attract businesses from elsewhere. However, some regions have realized that the returns to those efforts are minimal, with businesses attraction accounting for only 1 to 2 percent of net new jobs in most places, according to economist Jed Kolko. So, the focus has been shifting toward growing new jobs by strengthening and leveraging existing assets already present in the region’s firms, industry clusters, and supply chains.

Correspondingly, many regional partnerships are expanding their portfolios, launching new initiatives, and forging new partnerships. A good example is World Business Chicago, which, until several years ago, mainly focused on attracting international firms to locate in Chicago. It still pursues that mission but now gives equal weight to carrying out its Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs, which focuses on growing the regional economy from the inside out.

Similarly, over the past several years, Team NEO in Northeast Ohio has broadened its focus from marketing and attraction to growing existing businesses, and more recently to supporting the growth of new tech-based industries in the region.

In addition, as job growth has resumed without wage and income growth—leaving many workers and communities behind – more and more regional partnerships are abandoning the notion that a rising tide lifts all boats and are becoming more intentional about expanding opportunity for all, further broadening their agenda.

For example, the Regional Indicators Dashboard—developed by Greater MSP, the McKnight Foundation, ULI Minnesota, the Regional Council of Mayors, the Itasca Project, the Minnesota Business Partnership, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Minnesota chambers of commerce—represents a major break from past regional indices that focused narrowly on the cost of doing business and housing prices. The new dashboard includes measures of job quality, job preparation, job access, and shared prosperity.

Similarly, a growing number of regional partnerships are launching or supporting workforce development initiatives designed to connect lower-skilled workers with middle-skill job opportunities by better aligning worker training with the needs of the economy and employers.

In Louisville and Lexington the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (BEAM) led to the creation of paid apprenticeships by a network of major employers, adopting a model pioneered by Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Central Kentucky. In Chicago, World Business Chicago helped launch Skills for Chicagoland’s Future, which has developed partnerships with over 30 employers and has placed over 1,200 people in jobs.

These innovative efforts are broadening the scope and building the capacity of regional partnerships to deploy more effective approaches to economic development that focus on promoting both growth and opportunity. But those efforts face many challenges that are highlighted in the monitoring and evaluation report and will be discussed in other blogs in this series. 

      

 

 

Amid this urgency, we made a big bet, launching the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation (PSMI) in early 2011. The vision was to accelerate the U.S. transition into the next economy by helping cities and metro areas emerge from the recession with more jobs and better jobs but also with economies that were more opportunity-rich and globally competitive. The interest was swift. Governors and mayors—some newly elected—were eager to launch job strategies. Regional chambers of commerce and economic development organizations were scrambling to update old economic plans to reflect post-recession realities. Over nearly five years, PSMI has engaged 29 metropolitan areas and states in reorienting their strategies and investments toward innovation, entrepreneurship, trade, skills development, and other drivers of long-term sustainable growth.

This month, we published a new report commissioned from Regional Growth Strategies that gives us a window into how well that experiment has worked, drawing from a sample of the sites most intensely involved in PSMI, and what we and our partners have learned about the challenges of transforming regional and state economies.

The findings are both promising and sobering.

To be clear, we knew the goal was ambitious. No region or state could overhaul their market fundamentals or effectively tackle the big structural changes in the economy overnight. Plus, the promise of better jobs, expanding household incomes, and steadily improving living standards would take time to gain traction and yield results.

But a tangible shift is underway. Public and private sector leaders in cities and states are adopting a new generation of economic development strategies that reflect the needs of the future economy, while staying true to unique local assets and the potential of local workers. The state of Nevada and the Phoenix metro area, two places long synonymous with growth driven by tourism and housing construction, are undertaking comprehensive strategies around industry clusters, new technologies, and the development of a STEM workforce to diversify and strengthen their economy for the long-run. Syracuse/Central Upstate New York launched a global trade strategy, an expanded effort to train lower-skilled workers for better jobs, and an innovation initiative focused on the emergence of a new cross-sector technology cluster around data and remote sensing technology. Portland and San Diego spearheaded regional export strategies that deepen their specializations in green-building, life sciences, and other industries, attracting customers and venture capital from across the world. Memphis, which has long struggled with educational and racial disparities, is launching an ambitious workforce intermediary that is connecting the K-12 public education system, community colleges, and key industry partners to expand opportunities for firms and workers. And New York state created a national model for state economic development anchored in regional strategies by introducing a competition designed to incentivize and support strategic regional action.

The report also describes other civic innovations—the invention of new strategies, such as in exports and trade; the consensus toward systemic change with a “portfolio of mutually reinforcing initiatives” versus isolated rifle-shot solutions; and new multi-jurisdictional partnerships that are replacing wasteful intraregional rivalries. These exciting efforts are being rewarded with the rise of stronger backbone organizations and new intermediaries to support implementation.

But the report is also rather blunt about the challenges facing local and state leaders that could hamper further progress. These include the complexity of managing long-term collective impact when local players change and new priorities emerge. Leaders are also struggling to secure long-term funding to sustain and scale their efforts and deliver bigger results. Meanwhile, these transformative strategies operate even as incentive-driven economic development still abounds. “Business attraction is so hard-wired,” as one local leader observed, that traditional short-term approaches still dwarf the difficult efforts of this new tack.

The report’s author, Pete Carlson, will expand on the report’s lessons in a series of blogs over the next several months. Findings from the project will also be explored in more detail in a summative evaluation of the entire PSMI that will be completed later this year. We publish these findings and lessons in hopes that it informs and encourages the evolution underway in the field toward a more sustainable, resilient economy.

For Brookings, as we reflect on these lessons, we intend for this experiment to give way to a change in our business model. We intend to make it our objective to provide data, research, and a platform for state and metro leaders to continue to learn and succeed from national experts and, even more importantly, from one another.  We will continue to partner with forward-looking regions and institutions to tackle the persistent challenge of greater opportunity for all. 

      

 

 

At the regional level, Brookings has organized cross-sector partnerships of leaders to rigorously assess the unique assets and dynamics of their economies and develop strategies to leverage those assets to drive sustainable growth and expanded opportunity. At the state level, Brookings has worked with governors and state officials to rethink and revamp economic development policies. In addition, Brookings has communicated the urgency, rationale, and emerging outcomes of those strategies to spur others to adopt this new approach.

As part of its commitment to learning, Brookings funded ongoing monitoring of five regions and one state involved in the PSMI, including Louisville-Lexington, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Northeast Ohio, Portland, and Upstate New York (Syracuse), and the state of Nevada. 

Last December, Brookings convened leaders from these sites for a daylong conversation assessing the PSMI work overall, its impact thus far, and lessons for future work. A similar session engaged Brookings staff and leaders in a debriefing of the full portfolio of PSMI projects. In preparation for this report, additional interviews also were conducted with 13 leaders in those sites and four others, including Chicago, Memphis, Phoenix, and Puget Sound.

The findings from those assessments and interviews show that the PSMI has been an effective catalyst in changing thinking and practice related to economic development. The project has strengthened, deepened, and expanded efforts in participating sites to develop and deploy new approaches for expanding economic growth and opportunity.

The Brookings frameworks and analyses developed through the PSMI have provided focus and direction to those efforts, driving new insights and uncovering new opportunities for growth and development. And partnerships created or strengthened in the course of the project have built collaborative capacity at the metro and state levels to carry out and sustain this critically important work, in some cases bringing together public- and private-sector leaders who had never before worked together or focused on regional issues.

The work has not always proceeded smoothly, as regional organizations undertaking the PSMI work took on greater responsibility, reinvented their roles in the regions, managed layers of collaboration, and implemented far-reaching strategies to bring about the change envisioned. In some cases and in some sites, implementation has proceeded with stops and starts or required a change in course to overcome barriers. In other cases, initiatives put forward in the original strategies never gained traction or were surpassed by other priorities. Yet, where obstacles have arisen, leaders have devised new approaches or revamped the plans and moved forward on implementation of the new model.

In addition, work carried out as part of the PSMI is exerting important ripple effects within the regions that go beyond the direct intervention made under the project. Other organizations in participating regions are incorporating the model and agenda into their own work. And relationships developed through the PSMI efforts are being leveraged to generate new initiatives and build new capacity as work proceeds across multiple fronts.

Given that the focus of the PSMI is on long-term transformation of systems, its full impact will not begin to emerge for several years, as the theory of change predicts. However, the PSMI has laid important groundwork and shaped ongoing efforts to expand growth and opportunity, and sites are building momentum in this direction.

That momentum bodes well for the long-term adoption of the model, although several issues will present challenges to regional leaders as they work to sustain and expand these efforts. It is another positive outcome of the efforts so far that these issues have been identified and can be anticipated and addressed going forward. Some of the key considerations identified:

• Leaders need to be able to work across programmatic and jurisdictional boundaries to implement the new model, both strategically and organizationally, but such “galvanizing” leaders are in short supply.
• The work is long term and systemic, but funding is short term and programmatic, requiring regional leaders to cobble together programmatic grants on a long-term basis.
• Dedicated staff is essential to the core team guiding the work, but sites are challenged to secure sustained funding for “backbone” organizations or intermediaries.
• Systems change requires a holistic approach, but moving on too many fronts can overwhelm the effort. Focusing on single projects is more feasible but reduces the potential for broader impact and transformation of systems.
• Entrenched interests and systems resist change, and many public resources are constrained by established programs.
• A natural process of entropy arises from inevitable changes in leadership, the economic and political landscape, and priorities in organizations and funders, increasing the challenge of sustaining long-term efforts.

Lessons such as these, learned over the four years of the Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation, have refined and sharpened the strategy, even as the work continues to unfold. These lessons are also laying the groundwork for a next generation of research into the forces and conditions that drive healthy economic growth in metros and how best to leverage them. Brookings knows now more clearly where it can add the most value—and how it can join with metro and state partners to drive the creation of more equitable and inclusive growth.

      

 

 

This statistic is surprising given the outsized role that exports played in helping the United States recover from the Great Recession. During the initial recovery period, nearly 40 percent of U.S. GDP growth came from exports.

Today, almost 80 percent of global purchasing power resides outside the United States. Rising global demand—especially in emerging markets, with their expanding middle-class consumer bases—has heightened U.S. firms’ interest in exporting.

Becoming an exporter requires investments of time and money. International marketing and sales, order fulfillment and distribution, and trade compliance all add up. Harder still can be securing longer-term loans and equity finance to fuel a company’s international growth. For small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—those employing fewer than 500 workers—the cost of entering new markets poses a sizable challenge. Without access to capital, many of these smaller firms forego lucrative export opportunities that would enable them to grow and create jobs in the United States.  

SMEs typically have a harder time securing export financing than large firms do. Their smaller size and limited assets, along with elevated loan processing costs, make banks less interested in working with them. Meanwhile, most SMEs are unaware of the export financing programs offered by the Export-Import Bank, the Small Business Administration, and other institutions.

There is an opportunity for state governments to take steps to improve SMEs’ access to export financing. By incorporating export support into their broader economic development strategies, states can increase the number of exporters, which in turn will boost job creation and strengthen their metropolitan areas’ economies.

Our new brief—“Bridging Trade Finance Gaps: State-Led Innovations to Bolster Exports by Small and Medium-Sized Firms”—offers three complementary approaches that states can adopt in their efforts to address the SME export financing shortfall.

First, states can work to raise awareness among SMEs and financial institutions about existing federal and private instruments and sources of export financing. This action will encourage greater numbers of firms and banks to take advantage of proven solutions to the export finance challenge.

Second, states can offer additional financial instruments to help reduce SMEs’ barriers to exporting. Direct loans and loan guarantees, royalty-based financing, and accounts receivable financing, among other interventions, make it easier for potential SME exporters to expand into new markets. And in addition to banks, states can work with a broader set of actors—such as with factoring companies and equity funds—to meet SME’s diverse export finance needs.

Third, states can set up new finance entities that provide direct export finance support exclusively targeted to SMEs. A state-level export-import bank—perhaps akin to the California Export Finance Office (CEFO), which offered a variety of guarantees for smaller export-related loans from its inception in 1985 until 2003, when state budget problems forced its closure—  could be able to offer flexible, tailored solutions to the challenges facing these smaller firms.

State-level efforts are no replacement for federal programs like the Export-Import Bank, which plays a critical role in helping U.S. companies compete in the global marketplace. But state strategies can provide a much needed supplement to federal export finance programs by bridging the gaps in the current system. By implementing innovation solutions to the challenges facing potential and current SME exporters, states can help SMEs expand into new markets and bolster economic growth in the process.

      

 

 

Despite these recent gains, many companies remain reluctant to enter into foreign markets. This is especially true of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which have long been content to conduct business exclusively within the United States. However, as emerging markets expand and demand for U.S. products and services grows, SMEs would be remiss in continuing to avoid exporting.

Unfortunately, access to capital remains a sizable obstacle for SMEs looking to become exporters. Although the federal government has worked to address export finance challenges, these interventions have proven imperfect solutions, particularly given the growing uncertainty surrounding the future of such efforts. Meanwhile, several other critical challenges have yet to be resolved, including a lack of awareness about existing export finance programs, financial instruments that are poorly designed for SME needs, and the private-sector financing gaps faced by SMEs.

Given these challenges, states interested in bolstering exports have an important role to play in improving SME access to export financing. This brief argues that states can draw on three complementary approaches to address the SME export financing shortfall:

• Raise awareness among SMEs and financial institutions regarding the various instruments and sources of export financing that are currently available
• Adopt additional financial instruments to alleviate financial constraints for SMEs interested in global trade
• Create new finance entities to improve SME access to export financing