A meeting recently held in Hu Zhiming city announced Italy's sponsorship plan for small and medium enterprises, and leather and footwear companies will benefit from it. The SME cluster development plan has been supported by the Italy government, and has been jointly coordinated by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the planning investment department's enterprise development agency.

FrancescoRusso, chief technology adviser of the program, said that the 3 million euro project focused on improving the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises through far-reaching technical assistance programs, focusing on the main weaknesses of Vietnamese enterprises, such as design and marketing capabilities, product and processing development, technology, quality inspection, and management and technical capabilities. The objectives of the programme also include fostering business partnerships in enterprises and alliances in Vietnam and Italy.

Three industries, namely leather and footwear, clothing and textiles, wood processing and furniture, have been selected by UNIDO as the industry to develop and promote industrial coordination in the next two years.

Russo adds that every SME has the same weakness. That is, they lack enough resources to compete in the international market in terms of scale, skills, technology, R & D, marketing information and financing.

However, if SMEs can be integrated together and collectively competitive, they can help SMEs participate in competition and integrate with the market. At present, they have not yet achieved such capability.

Design, quality, marketing and expertise constitute the advantages of SMEs in Italy. Discount rates and easy access to Asian markets are seen as advantages of Vietnam's SMEs. If we combine the strengths of two small and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam and Italy, we can improve their competitiveness in the international market.