From 22^nd May to 12^th June, representative of FORS Montenegro, Veselin Sturanovic, visited the United States of America, as a guest of the State Department within International Visitor Leadership Program.

The topic of the program was “Development of Small Businesses/Enterprises in the United States of America” .

 Twenty representatives of different countries from all over the world had the opportunity to learn about functioning of small businesses in the USA. 

 The objectives of the program are:

• To emphasize economic, political and social factors that influence development of entrepreneurship in the USA.
• To examine closely the role of small businesses and their influence on economic development in the world
•  To present the influence of US small businesses at local, regional and national level, as well as the influence on global economy

The program included a visit to Washington DC, during which our hosts familiarized us with functioning of the federal bodies and their contribution to creating conditions for small businesses that make up 99.7% of the total number of registered businesses.

After that, we stayed in Raleigh which is the capital of the State of North Carolina, where we learned about functioning of state bodies related to the support to development of small businesses.

Later we stayed in the state of Wyoming, town Jackson, where two national parks are situated – Teton and Yellowstone. We had the opportunity to talk with the representatives of the local governments and State of Wyoming about development of business. After that we spoke about the same topic with the owners of businesses in Teton County.  

Our visit was finished in the State of Texas, in Dallas.  

Our opinion is that the visit will greatly influence future development of our organization since we strive to become one of the important factors in the process of creation of conditions for development of small and medium enterprises as promoters of the development of both northern area and Montenegro as a whole.