Since 2001, among the central reforms undertaken in Finnish VET has been the incorporation into the curriculum of work-related learning lasting at least six months. Efforts to achieve closer cooperation between VET and working life also include vocational skills demonstrations that became established in 2006. The previous studies also show that these reforms have improved this cooperation. In the province of Central-Finland there are many projects with different operation models aiming to develop vocational education in collaboration with working life and competences of enterprises in the spirit of learning region. One of those supporting projects was an ESF-project called ‘A Self-evaluation System and the Effectiveness of Efforts to improve Company-based Competences’. One aim of the project was to evaluate the effectiveness of competence development of enterprises from the regional point of view. The project was implemented in 2009-2010 in Central Finland. The data was collected by the Internet questionnaire addressed to the SMEs, and 140 answers were returned. This paper focused on the role of VET institutions in cooperation with SMEs. The findings indicate that VET institutions play an important role in regional development and they have regular contacts with enterprises.