In some cases, apprenticeships in the informal economy can offer many young people an opportunity to learn a trade and enter the world of work. Skills development is a necessary response to the challenge of youth unemployment. Effective programmes should involve packages of training-cum-labour-market-services. These should include: providing advisory services and career guidance, vocational counselling, job-search assistance and job placement, as well as access to different types of training, including combinations of learning and earning through apprenticeships or subsidized employment in return for on-the-job training. Successful entrepreneurship programmes should also involve providing basic business skills and linking would-be entrepreneurs to mentoring, finance and market opportunities. These integrated approaches are needed to assist young people in their transition from school to work and to tackle the multiple constraints they face on the labour market. The need for effective certification cannot be overemphasised. In conclusion, skills development can make a critical contribution to youth employment promotion and income generation through MSMEs. Coordinated policies linking education, skills formation, and employment are required. Well-designed active labour market policies linked with technical and vocational education, on-the-job training and apprenticeships – both formal and informal – are essential for skills development, employment and entrepreneurship and can help alleviate unemployment and underemployment. Connecting training providers and employers can be especially effective at sector and local levels. Further, involving the private sector is essential to employment creation. Furthermore, special attention should be paid to supporting MSMEs as the most dynamic sources of employment.

Dimitar Radev: Crisis management framework in Bulgaria Summary of statement by Mr Dimitar Radev, Governor of the Bulgarian National Bank, at the annual meeting of governors and other central bank representatives from the countries of the Dutch-Belgian constituency of the IMF, organised by the National Bank of Belgium, Brussels, 24 February 2017. * * * The closure of the fourth largest bank in Bulgaria in 2014 put to the test the country’s financial stability. This incident revealed, among other things, serious limitations in our crisis management arrangements in the banking area and, more specifically, the lack of a proper institutional framework to deal with resolution of systemically important banks. Our policy response to the 2014 crisis was incorporated in an 18-month plan adopted in mid2015, defining concrete actions in three priority areas: An independent assessment of: (1) the banks in Bulgaria (through an AQR and stress tests that were completed in 2016), and (2) our crisis management framework (through a still ongoing financial sector assessment, FSAP, by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank); A comprehensive reform of the Central Bank’s banking supervision and regulation framework and practices, based on the Basel Core Principles (BCP); Introducing the BNB’s new bank resolution functions compliant with the European Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD). The implementation of the plan helped build sound foundations for our crisis management framework.