Contemporary Forms of Supporting Entrepreneurship and Investments on SMEs: The Case of Polog Region in the Republic of Macedonia

The world economy is facing a variety of financial and economic challenges caused by different economic and political crises. Furthermore, the crises have had a negative impact that has been reflected on the macroeconomic indicators of each national economy. In these circumstances the transition economies, especially the Western Balkan countries needed to cope with the ever growing international competition, increasing unemployment, lack of private initiatives and investments, low level of economic growth and development. As a result, the attention is oriented towards SMEs, the importance of SMEs as a key pillar to sustainable growth and competitiveness on national and global market. The focus of this research is the importance of various contemporary forms which support entrepreneurship in order to increase investments, such as: business start-up centres, clusters, business incubators, economic zones and investment funds. The main objective of this research is to determine and measure the relationship between the SMEs from Polog region and contemporary institutions: business development centre (BDC) and technology park (TP) at SEE University, Enterprise Support Agency (ESA) as a private company and economic chamber of Macedonia which support private initiatives and increase their investments. In order to determine the relationship, a survey on SMEs in Polog region is conducted. The methodology used is cross tabulation two-way tables with measures of association based on data analysis from surveys and processed by STATA software. The main finding of this research is the positive impact of BDC, ESA and economic chamber on Polog region SMEs on the increase of their investments. Keywords: Investments, SMEs, Entrepreneurship, BDC, Growth, Economic Development