Policy under review after stakeholder consultation

THE current Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) Policy (2016-2021) is under review after consultation with the stakeholders was completed, an official says.
SME Corporation managing director Petrus Ralda said the policy was now being finalised and would be submitted to the National Executive Council for approval next month.
“The new policy will be called MSME development policy 2022 which will also include the micro enterprises,” Ralda said.
“While reviewing the SME policy, we are also reviewing the act so that both are consistent to effectively implement the policy throughout the country.”
In line with these changes, the SMEC has also initiated key impact projects, one of which is the roll out of the MSME training throughout the country.
“Currently we are trialling incubation centres in the four regions of the country and these are pilot project areas,” he said.
“From these four areas, we will then target the 89 districts in the country.”
Ralda said stakeholders at the provincial level were encouraged to work closely with SME Corporation so that more people were trained at the district level down to local level governments and ward areas.
“We are looking at training a maximum of 100 people in a ward per year and multiply that with the 6,300 words in the country, we would have trained around 630,000 people.”
The Asian Development Bank is one of the major stakeholder in this programme and is supporting the industry profiling and SME baseline survey in the country.