LEA partners with PPC Cement for SMMEs
Local Enterprise Authority ( LEA) partnered with PPC Cement Botswana to conduct capacity building workshops for the SMMEs to address inaccuracies experienced in the SMME businesses.
This is one of the initiatives that the authority is taking to capacitate growth of the SMMEs following the introduction of the Economic Inclusion Act that seeks to promote effective participation of a targeted citizen in the economic growth and development of the economy. LEA Head of Capacity Development , Mompati Baiphetlhi said it is through this initiative that the authority is veering up to capacitate SMMEs to fully participate in driving the economy. “There is a lot that government is doing but we need to capacitate our SMMEs and this cannot be done by government alone; it is important that the private sector also gets involved. When these SMMEs grow, the private sector also grows and these SMMEs are not going to remain in the same level as they will be able to graduate to large enterprises.”
Baiphetlhi highlighted that the authority is currently struggling with lack of accurate indication of the contribution of SMME sector to the economy. “Part of this is that we do not have very good records of their revenue, how many people they employ and how long they have been in business. So with record keeping, we felt this is a very important management function that we need to empower our SMMEs with.” He highlighted that the authority is planning to conduct the trainings virtually to enable more participation. “I want to appeal to the telecommunications sector to try to broaden and improve connectivity so that SMMES will be able to attend training programmes in their workplaces.” In this programme, there are about 20 SMMEs from the Southern and Northern region. Baiphetlhi said after this piloting project the number of trainnees will increase. For his part, PPC sales Manager, Cliff Alfred explained that Partnership with LEA will help SMMEs grow into large enterprises and improve livelihoods of communities. “We have worked with SMMEs through our Local Enterprise Development ( LED) programe and we have contributed meaningfully in changing their business growth. We want these SMMEs to grow and be able to sustain themselves.” He said partnership with LEA will go a long way in developing enterprises. “By feeding SMMEs with knowledge, we open them up to external markets and they will be able to create more jobs.”