National News

Kasungu people get business skills

Ministry of Trade and Industry through the Department of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) has trained businesspeople from Kasungu District on how to run small-scale businesses.

Speaking yesterday during the workshop, the department’s chief enterprise development officer Alexander Mtsendero said it is important to publicise the MSME policy among small and medium businesses to promote them.

Participants follow a presentation during the training

He said: “The MSME policy was developed in 2019 but it has not been fully publicised to the stakeholders who can help in developing MSMEs.

“The policy has several priority areas such as enabling legal environment, access to finance, access to markets and also appropriate infrastructures for small businesses.”

Mtsendero said they want to see MSMEs utilising the policy and getting support from institutions such as the Agriculture Commercialisation (Agcom) and Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship Scaling projects which provide support to organised MSMEs.

Kasungu district director of planning and development Anne Zimba commended the department for sharing the policy with businesspersons from the district.

She said: “There was an MSME policy of 1998 which people did not know much about, but now we have learned about the 2019 policy.

“I am pleased that there is an implementation plan and monitoring and evaluation framework to gauge its progress.”

Fernando Chizwa, a member of Kachere Youth Cooperative in Chinkhoma, said they learned how to run small-scale businesses.

He said they ventured into bee-farming and they learned how to expand their businesses.

“The policy has enlightened us on markets and business financing, which we did not know,” said Chizwa.

In Malawi, there are 1.6 million MSMEs, employing approximately 1.8 million people, which accounts for about 24 percent of total employment in the country.

Related Articles

Back to top button