Agencies working with SMEs told to do review

AGENCIES associated with small-to-medium enterprises need to review what they have been doing to drive the sector to progress, according to the Small Medium Enterprise Corporation (SMEC).
Managing director Petrus Ralda said during the opening of the SME Week in Port Moresby that a different strategy and approach were needed.
“If you look at old policies, strategies, old plans in the past 46 years, we have been running parallel,” he said.
“There is no convergence point,”
“Vision 2050 is there but all the economic sector agencies, all policies and all government provincial and district development plans and priorities have been running parallel.
“Everything should be aligned and we should be focusing and complementing each other’s skills, knowledge and functions, cutting out duplications.”
Ralda said capacity building was an important issue for Papua New Guinea given that almost 85 per cent of the population remained illiterate
“The SMEC has been running capacity building since 1996 but the sector is big and difficult to cover everything,” he said.