Economic Information System for SMEs Information Base for SME Policy. SMEs themselves need not only technical and marketing information of the sort which must be provided by more specialized institutions, but also more general macroeconomic information on what is happening in the country, in world markets, in the financial sector, and in the composition of output and demand at home and abroad. While general sources provide much of this, they do not organize and summarize it in a way that makes it useful to SMEs. Various industrialized countries have such information systems and associated publications, which could serve as models.
No Latin American country has a satisfactory body of up-to-date, comprehensive and usable information on SMEs, of the sort that governments need in order to make correct policy decisions and provide appropriate support to the sector. Some currently missing types of information need to be collected. A reasonable amount of information does exist in most LAC countries, but it is not easily accessible, full of errors and biases which only close students of the sector are likely to be aware of and, in short, not organized in a timely and useful way. There is no way, with reasonable dispatch, to assess the aggregate impact of any SME support program.
Information on Human Resources Abroad and How to Locate them SMEs often need technological assistance to organize the workplace and the like, which cannot be provided locally. This is especially the case when they are exporting or want to begin exporting, since the requirements of foreign markets are not as well known to local consultants. A system designed to connect SMEs to foreign sources of expertise would have a considerable payoff in many situations.
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