Addis Ababa, July 14(ENA)--State Minister for Trade and Industry, Fantaye Biftu says the government has been providing support to Small Scale and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to upgrade their competitive capacity in the market.

He said the SMEs were being provided with training and business development services such as counseling and advisory services.

The State Minister was speaking here on Monday to the opening of a training of business linkages workshop organized by Enterprise Ethiopia in collaboration with United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Fantaye said the SMEs achieved satisfactory results immediately after the introduction of reform program.

He said, however, the pace of growth slowed down due to lack of access to finance, inadequate entrepreneurial institutions, obsolete technology and incompetence to access export markets, among others.

The sate minister said the government, the private sector and other development partners have joined hands to address bottlenecks for the booming of SMEs.

Preparations are in pipeline to institute more supportive measures through access to finance and development industrial sites.

''Studies are also in progress to design the legal, institutional and policy framework to jump-start linkage and sub-contracting with full vigor", He said.

The process of enhancing meaningful partnership with foreign firms could be achieved with selective intervention and assistance to the sub sector.

Some 30 pertinent professionals are attending the three-day conference.