Amidst the unprecedented challenges brought by Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s commitment to reforms remains unwavering. The government has notably continued implementing substantial policy efforts to foster economic growth, cultivating an environment conducive to private sector development and entrepreneurship. The OECD has been supporting this impetus through steadily increasing co-operation, including via a number of regional and country-level projects carried out in close co-operation with public and private stakeholders under the EU4Business Initiative to support the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their digital transformation. Most recently, the OECD SME Policy Index: Eastern Partner countries 2024 highlighted the country's considerable improvements in SME policies, with the country improving its scores in all twelve dimensions of the assessment.
Building on this longstanding co-operation, the OECD launched, in early 2022, a project in co-operation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine (MDTU) and the Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office (EEPO) to promote the digital transformation of SMEs. The project was put on hold after the outbreak of the war, but, as Ukraine seeks to step up policy efforts, activities resumed in early 2023 with a new focus on enhancing resilience by boosting digital business transformation.
Throughout 2023, the OECD provided tailored guidance to Ukraine on how to accelerate the digital transformation of businesses and further leverage the potential of digital tools for resilience. To this end, the OECD carried out desk research, fact-finding exercises, benchmarking against OECD good practices, and targeted capacity building activities to analyse the state of play and suggest concrete policy options. Three working group meetings were organised, combining panel discussions about Ukraine and case studies of the best practices identified. They gathered senior policymakers from Ukraine, private sector representatives, international practitioners and experts from OECD countries, as well as EU and OECD officials. The project also benefitted from very valuable inputs from a designated expert in SME development and innovation policy, Veronika Špírková, from the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Czechia, Prague University of Economics and Business, as lead reviewer.
This report summarises the main findings and suggests actionable policy options for the short-, medium- and long-term to 1) build an ecosystem conducive to SME digitalisation at national and sub-national level, 2) develop comprehensive support services for SME digitalisation, and 3) introduce specific measures to help firms tap into the potential of digital tools to tackle war-related challenges, increase their resilience, and weather recent economic shocks. The results and recommendations can feed into upcoming policy initiatives and documents, such as the next SME Strategy, and help bring Ukraine closer to OECD and EU standards.
This project was implemented within the framework of “EU4Business: From Policies to Action – Phase 2” in the Eastern Partnership, with the financial support of the European Union (EU). The project was co-financed by Czechia.
Initial findings were discussed at a Peer Review of Ukraine at the OECD Eurasia Competitiveness Roundtable that took place on 14 December 2023, as part of OECD Eurasia Week 2023 in Paris. Prior to finalisation, the report was then circulated for further comments to the Roundtable in April 2024.