|
Chami challenges SIDO to extend quality assurance training
2008-03-24 10:22:01
By Correspondent Beatrice Philemon
The Small Industries Development Organization (SIDO) has been challenged to extend its training on quality assurance and control, marketing and packaging skills so that the country could meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) earlier than the projection.
``There is an urgent need to extend training for small scale enterprises for them to acquire relevant skills that will make the country achieve MDGs,`` said deputy minister for Industry, Trade and Marketing Cyril Chami, recently in Dar es Salaam.
He said harmonising people to set up small entreprises would help them acquire better business skills.
``This is an important factor that will easily make Tanzania an industrialised country by the year 2025 and support it in meeting the Millennium Development Goals,`` he said.
He insisted: ``You need to do it because through SIDO, people from different areas can learn a lot of things including agro-food processing, textiles and garments manufacturing, leather and leather products, handcrafts, metal work, light engineering and others that will help them to create employment, generate income, speed up our economic development and at the same time assist Tanzania in its efforts to alleviate poverty.``
Dr. Chami explained that there was need for SIDO to focus on training that would assist both small and medium entrepreneurs to add value to their products and improve quality.
``As you see, no developed country started with big industries, as a result, Tanzanians must use our human resources to train more people so that they can set up further enterprises, create job opportunities, and at the same time assist the government attain its goals,`` he said.
He said: ``Tanzania`s industrialisation will not grow if the stakeholders will not support this important set up-small scale industries.
This can only be possible if there is enough allocation of funds as well as technical assistance to help capacity building.``
He noted that there was a need for Tanzanians to feel proud of buying locally produced goods adding that attitude would help them to reach where Japan, Chinese, Thailand, India and other countries had reached.
He also called upon SIDO, responsible ministry and other stakeholders to come up with new strategies that would help small and medium entrepreneurs enter into the AGOA market.
``I encourage them to do it because, although the AGOA market is now open for Tanzanians to export their products in the US, right now there is a huge number of traders who have not shown interest in exporting their products to the market,`` the deputy minister said.
For his part, SIDO director general, Mike Laizer, said that although his organisation was supporting small-scale enterprises both in the rural and urban areas, there were challenges frustrating it.
Among them, he said, were the availability of packaging materials suitable for their traders` products and higher lending interest rates.
|
