ICPE is an inter-governmental international Center with its headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It traces its origin to the International Center for Public Enterprises in Developing Countries set up on a UN initiative in 1974, which became a fully-fledged international Center in 1980 with more than 40 developing countries as its Member-States. After the independence of Slovenia, the new Republic of Slovenia became the host-country of the ICPE. Later in 1997 the formal name of the Center was changed to International Center for Promotion of Enterprises, by a Resolution of the ICPE Assembly. This gave the Center a more ‘inclusive’ and broad-based mandate in keeping with the changed economic and political priorities of Slovenia and many of the leading Member-States including India.

The ICPE is now mandated to pursue and promote international cooperation in areas related to entrepreneurship development, SME and infrastructure sectors, corporate governance, technology transfer, strategies for privatization, FDI, promotion of knowledge-based societal change through research, training, consultancy and information services in these fields.