Chamber wants policy to help women

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
PNG Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry says the Government has to do more to improve the small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) policy on women’s involvement.
President Avia Koisen told The National that they reviewed the SME policy, launched by the O’Neill Government in 2016, and found out that it had only about a half-page written about women’s involvement in SMEs.
She said women were grouped with disabled people and youths, which they felt was not good enough.
According to the overview and commentary on the SME policy that was published online by Price Waterhouse Coopers, the objective of the policy was to support and grow the SME sector.
It said this was in order to create new employment opportunities, achieve sustainable economic growth outside the resources sector, and achieve a fair and equitable distribution of wealth through majority citizen ownership of business activities.
Koisen said they had recommended to Government for a more in-depth policy that could assist every women – regardless of their background and physical state – to equally participate in doing businesses.
She said two of their recommendations were: Review of the tax policy to allow tax holidays for small SMEs; and, for banks to relax their policies to make it easier for women to go and open bank accounts.
“Tax holidays will not only focus on women SMEs, but for all businesses as they normally start off small,” Koisen said.
“They need a breathing space to at least make some reasonable profit and save to put it back into capital to grow the business to a decent healthy level, to be able to now pay back the tax to the Government.”
She said small SMEs were now paying taxes just like the big companies, as there was no concession.
Koisen said investing on women in business should be made the country’s agenda for economic development.
“It’s a development agenda,” she said.
“As we all know, if you help a woman, you are helping children, family.
“When you help a family and the children are able to go to school, you’ve got a vibrant economy growing from that family.”