The Diplomat
ICEX has launched ICEX APIEm (Asesoramiento Personalizado para la Internacionalización Empresarial, Personalized Advice for the Internationalization of Businesses), a new support program that will allow Spanish SMEs with little or no export experience to learn about their international development potential at zero cost.
he objective of this initiative is to advise and incorporate into internationalization 3,500 companies throughout Spain that are not yet taking advantage of the public support available for this purpose, before the end of 2024. According to ICEX, of the 3.37 million companies that existed in Spain in 2021, only 6.9% exported and only one in four firms did so on a regular basis.
The program offers the company a capabilities diagnosis, carried out by means of a micro-consultancy and a personalized report with specific recommendations for each case. It also includes a selection of the services and instruments to support business internationalization that best suit each company and a report on the most appropriate markets and channels to initiate or consolidate their presence.
APIEm also aims, as an additional objective, to identify women-owned companies that access the program, promoting their internationalization and thus contributing to increase their presence in foreign markets. This objective is part of ICEX’s own objectives, which it has incorporated into its action plan, and is aligned with the commitments to promote gender equality of the 2030 Agenda and the United Nations SDGs, the principles inspiring the EU’s Next Generation Funds and the Spanish Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), in which the APIEm program is framed.
