SMEs source of economic growth—Smedi

Small and Medium Enterprises Development Institute (Smedi) has described small-scale businesses as the engine for the country’s economic growth, saying they drive economy through tax contribution.

“People running small-scale businesses are the engine for economic development. Even developed countries look up to small-scale businesses as a source of economic growth,” said Smedi director of business training coordination Edwin Mguwata.

He said small-scale entrepreneurs (SMEs) also provide employment to several people, thereby driving the economy.

Mguwata was speaking on Friday in Mzuzu during the graduation of 412 members of Taonga and Chideso community-based organisations (CBOs) under the SOS Village Family Strengthening Programme and have been trained in business management, entrepreneurship and proposal writing.

He said Smedi is there to promote development and expansion of SMEs in the country and, as such, the organisation plans to link them to micro finance institutions as most of them lack capital to expand.

“As government, we will try to look into ways on how we can help small-scale businesses to find capital to expand their business,” he told the participants.

Mguwata, therefore, advised those who have been trained to form associations or cooperatives to easily access loans from micro lending institutions.

SOS Village Family Strengthening Project coordinator Andrew Mang’anda, said SOS Village has various interventions to assist communities and families to raise their children, one of them being capacity building.

He said the trainings were organised to build capacity of CBOs and caregivers so that they should know how to write project proposals.

Smedi, in collaboration with SOS Village, has since December last year been training members of Taonga and Chideso CBOs in the city’s Masasa Township  in business management, entrepreneurship and proposal writing.—Mana