The Ministry of Development, Public Works and Housing, together with the Ministry of the Small and Medium Enterprises have launched a website for the SMEs www.business-entrepreneur.ro, worth 6.2 mln Euros from Phare funds.
The website is not functional yet despite being launched on September, 25th. The Ministry of Development issued a press release explaining that the portal is part of a 4 component- project, valued at 6 million euros. However, the amount of money spent for the website was not released yet.
The opening page boasts ambitious objectives such as linking the public institutions with the business environment and facilitating the access to professional consultancy.
The portal aims at developing the business environment and the competition, according to John Barker - Representation of the European Commission in Romania. “It is not just another site. If this is the case, then we have wasted time and precious financing”, Barker said.
The new electronic instrument has 2 main functions: to facilitate the SME’s participation to the governance, by providing quick access to the public information and the opportunity to exchange experience with other SMEs; to provide business consultancy , access to products and catalogs, and online transactions.
The financing for the project comes from two Phare 2004 projects, within the Economic and Social Cohesion component.
Following the inquiry by the HotNews readers, the ownership of the website was revealed as being recorded on Anastasio Massimo’s name, an international expert in e-governance and e-business within the Consortium Consulting, formerly working for the Ministry of Finance and for the Ministry of European Integration.
According to Massimo, he is part of a 50 member team that has worked for the portal, which has been recorded on his name due to his technical position within the project. His job involves the web design supervision, together with other 12 colleagues, International and Romanian experts.
Except the benchmarking site, which was provided by an Italian company, the rest of the portal is a result of the collaboration between the experts.
