The Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation launched today the National Electronic Portal for small and medium enterprises www.smehub.jo to respond the urgent need to create an e- gateway for local economic SMEs, which is considered the first step for business owners who are seeking information, services and links that can help them build their  sustainable and competitive businesses.

The portal will provide useful government and commercial information and services to local SMEs at different stages of their life cycle, in addition to providing the required information to policy makers.

Manager of Governorates Development Fund Mr. Adi Ghuneim said that the main objective of this portal is to strengthen the infrastructure to support SMEs in Jordan by improving access to financial and technical services and facilitating access to business support organizations and service providers by developing this portal; the basic information about service providers will be integrated in an orderly and accessible manner by local SMEs, and effective communications between SMEs and service providers will be strengthened.

Ghuneim said that JEDCO aims at enhancing the feasibility of technical assistance programs by installing the national managed portal in one place through access to services for SMEs, where there are many service providers in Jordan, either a financial services provider or a non-financial service provider (technical assistance).

Ghuneim added that the portal will enable users to create an account to receive specific information and services based on their interests, business needs and requirements, where the portal through the service providers' database will choose the appropriate based on the requirements previously identified by the SMEs themselves, as this service will be provided to SMEs wishing to access technical services such as market access, training, technological development and product development, services to accelerate business, or financial services such as venture capital, Banking Services, Leasing, Grants and Others.

The portal contains many service providers and many programs that will be registered in the portal, and SMEs can choose the suitable one to express interest in it after filling out needed data specified by the service provider such as determining the company's sector, total sales, total exports, number of employees and others.

The portal also features an e-mail service as an immediate notice to all registered SMEs in the portal once a new program has launched, and a feature that links between service providers in order to reach the participatory status among service providers, which will increase the efficiency of the programs and enable them to serve more SMEs.

The portal will also continue to inform and update the registered SMEs with the latest regulations, laws and instructions related to their business, and will allow them to conduct assessments of the services they have benefited from.

Ghuneim praised the efforts and continued support of the European Union, which supported the promotional campaign in various governorates in Jordan through various audio and video media channels as part of the project "Communicating results of the EU support to the private sector development  in Jordan", which works with six official government institutions concerning the development of the private sector through Building the capacity of communications representatives to improve media coverage of ongoing structural reforms to support private sector development and educate the public about efforts, programmes and plans to stimulate sustainable economic development.