General Electric doubles the value of its procerement in CEE

General Electric (GE) aims to double the volume of the products and services bought from Central-Eastern European (CEE) SMEs, including Hungarian enterprises. The company has approximately 6.000 suppliers in the region and its procurement value exceeds 1,7 billion USD which can reach 3,4 billion USD by the end of the decade.

GE intends to achieve this by extending its SME supplier base, helping the development of regional suppliers and by transferring its know-how on digital disruptive technologies to its suppliers – the company informed on a regional supply chain conference in Warsaw and Elbag.

Representatives of Hungarian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Romanian, Serbian and Slovenian government organisation, investment agencies and export banks participated on the CEE Supply Chain Dialogue conference, initiated by GE and co-hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce. Objective of the event was to explore opportunities to better connect SMEs in CEE to the global economy via GE’s supply chain, hence to further increase the competitiveness of the CEE region.

“Central and Eastern Europe has experienced unprecedented growth in the past 20 years.

The source of that growth has been low labour costs, robust internal consumption and foreign direct investments. However, a preoccupation with pure technology absorption is not going to maintain economic growth in the long run and the increase in productivity is getting closer to the boundaries of technology” – said Peter Stracar, President and CEO, GE CEE. “Further growth needs different drivers and the real challenge will be how we support the transition of CEE into an innovation based region” – he added.