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Role of SMEs underscored
2006-09-10 09:18:23
By Correspondent Michael Haonga
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have been singled out as contributing immensely towards speedy economic development and employment creation.
The observations are contained in the annual 2006 Partnership Bulletin issued by ’’The Centre for the Development of Enterprise’’.
It targets on, among other things, how to speed up development and create employment in rural areas to reverse the present trend of urban influx of people in search for employment.
The bulletin observes further that the urban-rural influx of people looking for jobs could be reversed if SMEs processing plants for easily perishable agricultural products such as fruits, and tomatoes were established in every area producing such products.
It points out that presently, most of tomatoes, vegetables and fruits such as oranges and mangoes get destroyed as post harvest loss due to lack of processing facilities, thereby compelling the country to be dependent on imports of what it is able to produce abundantly.
The same was seen to be the case when it came to the countries which apart from being rich in having a lot of cattle have no SMEs meat canning plants.
It further cites a case of a professional meeting on cereal and legume seeds in West Africa where it was underlined that development of agro-food industries up to now had been centred on the processing of export produce (coffee, cocoa, cotton and others) and importing substitution products.
On SMEs processing plants, it was pointed out that ’’The sector is scarcely organized and lacks technical or technological resources’’ underlining that ’’...their promotion should be taken on by SMEs, who are better positioned to satisfy local market needs’’.
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