In cooperation with TOBB, International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and World Chambers Federation (WCF), the openning ceremony of the World SME Forum Foundation was held in Istanbul on 23 May  2015 with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, TOBB President and B-20 Turkey Executive Council President and Board Member of the ICC M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu and Secretary General of ICC John Danilovich.

In the openning ceremony of the foundation, President Hisarcıklıoğlu stated that World SME Forum Foundation would create a global platform in order to resolve current problems faced by SMEs and thus would be allowed to follow closely demands of SMEs. Hisarcıklıoğlu also gave his thanks to particularly Deputy Prime Minister Babacan, OECD, World Bank and international organizations who supported the establishment of the foundation. President Hisarcıklıoğlu in his speech stressed that Turkey, which became an important actor in shaping global governance, should take a more active role in the foundation.

In his speech, TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu emphasized that current problems of the SMEs in global governance are to integrate SMEs into the global trading system and the their lack of access to financing mechanisims.  

Underlining the increase of global economic crisis, TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu valued the role that the solution to these crisis is to build coordination mechanisms and added that G-20 process, in this point, would be a major part of this process in resolving crisis.   

President M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, however, noted that SMEs accounting for 60 percent of the global employment have not been mentioned in G-20 priorities since its establishment year of 1998. In this regard, Hisarcıklıoğlu addressed that SMEs are taken place within the framework of the principle of “inclusiveness” under the G-20 priorities and “SMEs and Entrepreneurship”, which was introduced as the additional objective of the B-20 goals. Importantly, Hisarcıklıoğlu emphasized that World SMEs Forum Foundation is established as the institutional form of the principle of inclusiveness of G-20 priorities.

In his speech, President Hisarcıklıoğlu indicated that there is no international organizations focusing on SME-related issues and ountlined the main objectives of the foundation as follows:

• to ensure to better participation for the SME community in the process of decision-making in order to access to international financing mechanisms and eliminate trade barriers;

• to promote information regarding to capacity building and

• to provide the use of information technologies.

Apart from these, TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu also announced the certification system which would increase the trust for SMEs among the international business world and to enable SMEs to be part of the global value chains.  

In the openning remarks, Deputy Prime Minister Babacan underlined that the foundation would introduce a permanent platform in regards to sustainable success for SMEs and added that the government would provide all kinds of support in order to achieve this success. In this point, Babacan reminded that the government already implemented the new bank regulations through which SMEs would provide loans easier compared to previous regulations. In his concluding remarks, Babacan wished the the continuity of success of the foundation in following years.