MSME commitment
“For the first time since these were conferred in 2009, the President last 10 July resurrected the Presidential Awards for Outstanding MSMEs.
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Daily Tribune“For the first time since these were conferred in 2009, the President last 10 July resurrected the Presidential Awards for Outstanding MSMEs.
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The United Nations last 27 June marked International MSME Day, noting that only six years remain before the 2030 deadline to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
To recall, the UN in 2015 adopted the SDGs, also called Global Goals, as an international call to action to — broadly — end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that much more than just a measure of peace and prosperity shall prevail in the world.
Work this year by the UN toward reaching the goals is being undertaken under a broad theme: MSMEs and the SDGs specifically leveraging micro, small, and medium-size enterprises’ impact and resilience in accelerating sustainable development and eradicating poverty at a time when the world is being challenged by multiple crises. For his part, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. commemorated MSME Day by calling on big business to support not only the government’s efforts in promoting MSME initiatives but to focus their sights on and boosting nano entrepreneurs in the country.
The latter are your unregistered livelihoods of self-employed persons or informal solopreneurs operating home-based businesses such as those that would include market women, vendors, repairmen, vulcanizers, make-up artists, and the like, working alone or making do with the help of, say, unpaid family members in small communities.
So small are these nano enterprises that, as the President said at the launch of the Cebuana Lhuillier Group’s Kanegosyo Center at the Palacio de Memoria in Parañaque City in June last year, these “small business don’t fall under any category of economic activity because they’re way below the radar.”
“They’re the people that we are trying to help,” the President added.
“And what we’re trying to do here is recognize that the global economy has been fundamentally changed by the pandemic; we have to do different things now. We are trying to create an ecosystem for startups; we are trying to help small businesses thrive. That is what Kanegosyo and all other such programs are trying to do — assist small businesses. It’s not something that is done just purely out of an instinct for business. It’s not something that is done para kumita lang (solely to make money); it is something that is done para tumulong (to help out),” he said.
The President recalled a conversation he had in 2020 while in Spain with Ambassador Philippe Lhuillier where they discussed how Filipino small businesses could be helped to sustain and thrive.
What came out of that talk was the Kanegosyo Center, with programs that provide startups with access to micro loans, savings, insurance, investments and other financial support needed by MSMEs to scale up operations, as well as coaching videos and workbooks among other aids on how to start online businesses and Kanegosyo Assist for regulatory assistance.
There are other major companies too that demonstrate an intent to help budding MSMES, like the SM Group’s accommodation of MSMEs’ expansion of their retail footprint in all of SM’s 83 malls across the country. The Group has also inked an agreement with the Department of Trade and Industry with regard to training MSMEs on sustaining their businesses, among other things.
Likewise, for the first time since these were conferred in 2009, the President last 10 July resurrected the Presidential Awards for Outstanding MSMEs, naming Davao-based chocolate-maker Malagos Agri-Ventures as the winner in the medium-size category and a bamboo treatment enterprise, Negros Oriental-based Kawayan Collective, in the small enterprise category. He also announced an executive order establishing the 2023-2028 MSME Development Plan.
This particular President’s concern for MSMEs is quite notable.
At the 42nd ASEAN Summit held in Indonesia in May 2023, other than his urgent call for the upholding of an international rules-based system underpinning peace and order and security in the region, the President also made a deliberate effort to highlight his commitment to enhanced support for MSMEs and nano businesses and their integration into the world’s economies.
At its launch in June last year, the President said the Kanegosyo Center is “one program that brings many elements together and if we stay committed to work hard and be sensitive to the needs of the people, I would imagine that all that we’re doing to help would be successful. We want to create an ecosystem for small businesses to be able to thrive and hopefully turn these small businesses into larger ones down the road.”
