German government extends SME program in CV

The Visayas region, especially Cebu, Leyte, and Negros Occidental provinces, will Benefit once more with the extension of the German government's Small and Medium Enterprise Development for Sustainable Employment Program 2 (Smedsep).

The German government will have to formally finalize another 30 million euro grant for the extension of the program, which will probably start this coming September 2006, said Department of Trade and Industry (DTI-7) regional director Asteria Caberte.

Smedsep is being implemented by the German Technical Cooperation, DTI, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

It is a technical cooperation between the Philippines and the Federal Republic of Germany. It aims to address the challenges that SMEs are facing today. Its end goal is to enable public and private institutions to create favorable business conditions to develop entrepreneurial potential and encourage competition.

This time, Caberte said the Smedsep 2 will no longer focus on specific sector for its support, but it will largely anchor on the local reforms on the business and investment climate aside from assisting the DTI provincial offices and local business associations in the actualization of their business plans.

Smedsep 1 ends its one-year program this coming August 30, 2006. Smedsep 2 starts on September this year and will run until August 2009.

The first phase of Smedsep focused mainly on helping Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) in Cebu specifically in the Information Technology (IT) sector.

Caberte said the target groups of Smedsep 2 are owners and employees of micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines especially in the Visayas.

Recently, Smedsep conducted an extensive training workshop for rural bank operators in the Visayas, called "Credit Pricing Seminar," as part of its post-activities before the phase 1 will end this month.

Over 30 rural bankers in Cebu, Samar and Leyte, were encouraged to adopt paradigm shift, especially in the providing credit assistance to the rural folks. This include, the adoption of cash-flow based lending, than collateral based lending.

According to Neimeier, the Smedsep program has recognized the larger role of the rural bankers to help the development of entrepreneurship in the rural areas, to provide capitalization not only to farmers, fishermen, but for micro-business operators like Sari-Sari Stores, and other businesses.