GTZ is a government-owned agency for international cooperation with worldwide operations. The GTZ’s aim is to positively shape the political, economic, ecological and social development in our partner countries.

The organisation has more than 10,000 employees in around 130 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, in the Eastern European Countries in transition and the New Independent States. Since the 1990s, GTZ has been actively involved in various projects in Central and Eastern Europe, e.g. in the EU programmes PHARE, TACIS, CARDS and MEDA. Since 1998, the GTZ Twinning Office/ Programmes of the Public Sector in Berlin has been involved in the Twinning scheme initiated by the European Commission as a pre-accession tool for Central and Eastern European countries applying for EU membership. For more than 100 projects in 12 countries the GTZ Twinning Office/ Programmes of the Public Sector has been providing successively services. The thematic areas range from regional development, finance and the economy to public health, judicial administration, agriculture, transport and environment.

The collaboration with the EU administration and the knowledge gained in the various twinning projects led to a well-structured network within the research and public sector and enabled the GTZ Twinning Office/ Programmes of the Public Sector to manage complex research projects and steer consortia with a multitude of partners. Due to its extensive expertise in managing international projects, and specifically EU projects, the GTZ Twinning Office/ Programmes of the Public Sector plays the key role in managing and coordinating the EUROPEER SME project, so that the other partners can fully concentrate on the content management.

GTZ has its own planning and development division for economic development and employment sector with over 50 permanent staff working as in-house consultants from headquarters near Frankfurt. The topics covered by GTZ´s sector experts range from policy advise in business environment and SME policy, innovation and technology promotion, local and regional economic development, trade, value chains, private sector development in conflict regions, finance system development and credit including micro finance, technical and vocational education and training and ICT in private sector development. This allows for high-quality backstopping support right from the project start-up. Moreover, GTZ has outstanding experiences with managing project funds and supra-regional projects.

Our concept of private-sector promotion is based on the systemic competitiveness approach, – which can be applied at the micro, meso and macro level: Enterprises remain competitive where sound framework conditions for investments are provided and where they have access to an efficient support network of service providers, business associations and promotion agencies. GTZ focuses on functioning markets, cooperating with the business sector as partner and driving force for development.

By way of dialogue between public and private actors we identify comparative regional advantages and give impetus to development processes . We support small and medium-sized enterprises, local and regional processes promoting the economy and contribute to the establishment of a business-friendly environment for example by reducing bureaucratic obstacles. We support our partners in making enterprises competitive for regional or worldwide trade. We work increasingly in partnerships with large national and international companies interested in high-quality location coupled with top-performance suppliers and service providers.

GTZ is proud to contribute to the EUROPEER SME Project and is constantly represented by its Berlin based team of the "Programmes for Public Sector Clients" department:  

GTZ 
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Technical Cooperation)