More than 200 delegates for SMEs conference

THE Zimbabwe Chamber of SMEs in partnership with a local advisory company, Alinial Chartered Accountants (Private) Limited, is expected to unveil its first ever electronic membership platform at the inaugural strategic conference in Chiredzi, Masvingo province next week.

The US$1,7 million platform, which will double as a live MSMEs database, is also expected to capture key membership details for the estimated 4,5m members in Zimbabwe.

Informed and focused policy interventions are expected to be enhanced on the platform as organised data and information about MSMEs in Zimbabwe will be easily available.

The conference runs from April 8 to 10 and is expected to draw input from various key stakeholders.

The conference will be held under the theme: Accelerating the attainment of Vision 2030 through all stakeholders’ collaborative efforts for fast tracking the implementation of MSMEs Policy 2020-24.

Zimbabwe Chamber of SMEs national secretary-general Valencio Kurauone said the platform would capture critical information and data about MSMEs to make policy intervention easy.

“Timely organised information and data about MSMEs has been a serious challenge to this country. We could not tell with promptness who among our MSMEs is doing, what, where and what are the operational challenges they are facing?

“We would ordinarily depend on expensive national surveys which due to various reasons, illegal economic sanctions included are not periodically done, currently the latest statistics and or data about MSMEs is as of 2021,” Kurauone said.

He said the formalisation agenda would target five million MSMEs by 2030.

“We have invested in excess of US$1,7m to develop an electronic platform that will also double as a live database of our membership.

“The platform will capture critical information and data about MSMEs that will make policy intervention by the government, development agencies and private corporate partners on MSMEs development issues an easy and focused task” he said.

He said the conference would also devise a five-year strategic plan to formalise at least five million members by 2030.

The 2021 MSMEs survey identified decent workspace, social protection services, access to wider markets, business linkages and technical business training, among other as key to government’s MSMEs formalisation agenda.