Engineering News: SME Indaba to seek tangible ideas to overcome barriers

The Small Business Institute (SBI) will host discussions on dysfunctional municipalities, red tape and late payments as business inhibitors at its Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Indaba, in Bryanston, on November 7.

This comes at a time when South Africa’s position in the World Bank Group’s Doing Business survey has slipped to the lowest in ten years and there is low business confidence, while the country has fallen 56 places over the last 14 years in the Fraser Institute’s study of economic freedom.

SBI executive director and former Harmony Gold CE Bernard Swanepoel says the indaba’s discussions are designed to elicit tangible ideas to advance some of what the surveys rank, especially when they benefit small businesses.

“By easing the many challenges of doing business for SMEs, we will activate the entire economy,” he notes.

According to the World Bank, 115 governments launched 294 reforms to address constraints to building more successful economies in the past year. Sub-Saharan African countries enacted 73 reforms, while South Africa implemented only two.

“If we are serious about employment creation, growing an inclusive economy and trying to attract foreign investment, we need to accelerate both policy reforms and implementation.”

by Creamer Media – http://m.engineeringnews.co.za/article/sme-indaba-to-seek-tangible-ideas-to-overcome-barriers-2019-10-29/rep_id:4433

Marleny Arnoldi

Edited by Chanel de Bruyn