EVALUATION NOTION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EVALUATION OF GOVERNMENT’S SUPPORT TO SMEs

Governments provide lots of services for citizens and also for SMEs by using public resources in the direction of various purposes. The public funding should be spent in an efficient way within the context of these services. Also, It should be confirmed whether these resources have been spent for the right purposes or not. And also, It should be checked that if there are any other and better ways to reach these purposes. Evaluation is a set of activities which is aimed to examine the outturn of a policy, programme or project against what was expected in the beginning. And it is designed to ensure that the lessons learned are fed back into the decision-making process. Without an effective evaluation mechanism, it is not possible to determine whether the supports which are transferred to SMEs which are regarded as backbones of all economies over the world, are effective and efficient. And also it is impossible to act in an evidence-based manner when designing new programs without an effective evaluation mechanism. Therefore, it is extremely important to be evaluated systematically Government’s SME support programs. In this study, various aspects of evaluation notion have been introduced and it has been discussed that why there is a need for a result based monitoring and evaluation system and the benefits of such a system. In addition, some information has imparted to establish an idea about how it can be possible to evaluate SME support programs. By embarking on a digression about impact evaluation, some basic information has been given about these Impact Evaluation studies. Consequently, in the light of all reached information and the researches done, It is deduced that evaluation is indispensable to provide efficiency and transparency for the use of public resources for SMEs and to institute an accountable public management philosophy.