CPL committed to supporting SMEs

By PETER ESILA
CITY Pharmacy Ltd is 100 per cent committed to supporting small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country, according to director Sir Mahesh Patel.

Sir Mahesh said in a SME supply chain business-to-business conference in Port Moresby recently that now that a new boss would be taking the business group into the future, he would be focusing on supporting SMEs especially in the agriculture sector.
CPL chief executive officer Navin Raju takes over next Jan 1.
Sir Mahesh said it would enable him to move into where his passion lay through the CPL Foundation to support SMEs. He will focus on women economic empowerment programmes, PNG farmers and start-up mentoring.
He will act as a mentor in CPL’s training and development programme to develop PNG talent.
“We encourage SMEs to engage with us early, so we can guide them for packaging, labelling and barcodes,” Sir Mahesh said.

“Sometimes continuous communication is an issue as well, thus our request to them to keep in constant touch with us.
“We plan to have a showcase of various locally produced goods by SMEs in the New Year.
“There is huge potential in agriculture in PNG.
“The people, growers they want to grow but they do not know what to grow.
“That is one of my passion, my aim is to get immersed with the community, knowing their needs rather than sitting in the office,” he said.
“I want to see where we can assist and where we can generate from small scale industries.

“If mothers are selling a product, how can they make something that we can sell and market, because they may not be able to do that, let us help them with their expertise and take it to market.
“This sort of things excite me because you can actually see the difference very quickly.”