They are also where the strain shows first. Small enterprises are the ones that struggle to get a loan, that operate informally and miss out on support because of it, that feel every rise in costs and every break in a supply chain. And they are the ones with the most to gain from the changes now reshaping the economy. New technology, digital tools and greener ways of producing can lift a small business onto a different level. The risk is that the enterprises most in need of that lift are the ones left behind by it.
The landscape around this work is changing too. Public funding for development is tighter than it has been in a long time, priorities are tilting toward economic growth and competitiveness, and the European Union's enlargement agenda is moving faster than it has in years. Taken together, these shifts point one way. Cooperation in this region will increasingly be built around competitive, modern private sectors and the jobs they create.
This is the work Swisscontact has been doing here for years, and it lines up almost exactly with what this year's theme asks for. Through the Market Systems Development approach, we work to make markets function around private enterprises - the finance, the advice, the supplier and buyer relationships, so that small businesses can invest in better technology, adopt cleaner methods, formalise and compete, and that the change stays in local hands. When budgets are tight, that is the only kind of change worth paying for.
In Kosovo, years of private-sector work through the Promoting Private Sector Engagement project, have created decent jobs for 6,633 people, around a third of them women, supported 915 small and medium enterprises and added CHF 7.5 million to the incomes of people who had little to begin with. The FEGO project helped 324 private businesses create 870 jobs and earn more than 7.3 million euros in new sales and exports between 2022 and 2025, while drawing in 4.6 million euros of private and public investment. Its successor, GROW Project Kosovo, now carries that work through 2029, supporting furniture makers, clothing producers and rural tourism operators as they modernise and reach new markets.
In North Macedonia, the Swiss Modernisation project sits squarely on this year's theme. It helps businesses raise productivity and adopt cleaner, more efficient ways of producing at the same time, the essence of sustainable industrial development. It also strengthens the local consultants and business associations that private businesses rely on, so the know-how to keep modernising stays in the country rather than arriving project by project. Its first phase aims to equip 15 local consultants with the tools to deliver business diagnostics services, build partnerships with 5 anchor companies and help 190 enterprises become more productive, greener and better employers.
In Georgia, the Rural SME Development project shows what access to finance and good advice can unlock. In its first phase, 1,228 rural businesses secured the funding they needed and invested around 7 million CHF in new technology, from harvesters and irrigation systems to processing lines and bakery equipment, lifting their incomes by 4.69 million CHF and improving the pay of more than a thousand workers. The deeper shift is in the system around them. Banks that once only said no now offer advice, and routes into state support have opened for people who were shut out.
In Ukraine, the Empower AgriWomen project is doing this through a war, which says a great deal about the resilience it is building. It helps small women farmers organise so they can deal with buyers and banks on stronger terms, and it brings in training, finance and greener technology, solar energy, composting and organic fertilisers among them, so that producing more does not mean wearing out the land. The aim is to reach 3,000 producers, 2,100 of them women, and to open access to finance for many who have rarely been offered it.
In northern Albania, the New Perspectives project, funded by the United Kingdom's FCDO, set out to give people in Kukës and Dibër a reason to stay rather than leave. For three years, the project worked to change how the local economy behaved by strengthening local government, employment services and businesses. The clearest sign came from the banks, which once struggled to lend and now report more applications, because more private businesses have stepped out of informality and arrive with solid business plans. Formalisation, in the end, is what turns a fragile business into one that can borrow, hire and grow, and in a short time the project showed how quickly that shift can take hold.
As priorities shift toward economic growth and competitiveness, as budgets tighten and as European accession raises the bar, one question matters more than the rest. Who can turn limited public money into private investment, durable jobs and firms ready for the European market? On the evidence of the last few years, Swisscontact already knows how. That is worth more than a day of recognition, though tomorrow is a good day to say it.