SMMEs are essential to economic growth

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Monday March 7, 2011 00:00

Speaking at a seminar designed to encourage procurement by SMMEs last Thursday, Mphetlhe said for Botswana to reduce reliance on other countries, mechanisms to promote SMMEs must be put in place.

'One such mechanism is local procurement which will grow SMMEs financially and also help them improve the product quality,' he said, noting that Botswana was a net importer of consumer goods because local manufacturing was still at an infant stage.

Mphetlhe said it was important to increase participation of citizen-owned firms in the economy, thus stimulating private sector involvement in economic development.

Botswana's EDD was rolled out last year through, among others, use of administrative interventions to promote domestic production, use of local procurement, targeted domestic production and consumption and citizen economic empowerment strategies.  EDD was motivated by the government's huge import bill, which is estimated at an average of P15 billion per annum.

Addressing participants at the same seminar, the Deputy Executive Director of Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower, Norman Moleele, urged SMMEs to join BOCCIM because it could help grow their businesses through networking.

Moleele noted that while popular perception held that BOCCIM members were huge entities, 76.5 percent of the country's biggest private sector organisation are small businesses. He implored the private sector to support local procurement with its buying power, and to devise initiatives for shared value between big businesses and SMMEs in order to help grow the local economy. The seminar was titled 'Investing In SMME: Suppliers Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility - Growing Leaders in Local Supply, Growing the Pillars Of A Sustainable Economy.'