The Index will cover a number of areas of interest to SMEs, including faster and cheaper start-up, entrepreneurship education and training, access to finance, improving technological capability, getting more out of the ASEAN market, and developing stronger representation of SMEs in national policy arena, Jakarta-based ASEAN Secretariat said in a press statement here Wednesday.
This Index is expected to facilitate harmonize policies, strengthen coordination of policies and programs for SME development in the region program, and serve as an instrument for capacity building for regulators and SMEs.
The symposium, which was held in the run-up to the 18th ASEAN Summit, was attended by more than 200 participants from the business community, government officials, diplomats, academic, civil society and media.
Indonesian Minister of Trade Mari Elka Pangestu who is also the Chairperson of the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM), in her key note address, urged the Symposium to come up with concrete recommendations on what ASEAN can do to bring ASEAN to the people through SMEs.
She focused on specific areas such as making SMEs use more fully for the potential benefits from a single ASEAN market as well as ASEAN+1 markets (from the ASEAN+1 FTAs).
Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Syarifuddin Hasan in his acceptance speech emphasized that the vast majority of the business players in the region are SMEs.
He added that because it is primarily through them that the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) measures impact on the populace, it is important to examine, and shape, the regional integration architecture embodied in the AEC Blueprint measures from the lens of the development of SMEs in the region; namely, their growth, adjustment and participation in the deepening trade and economic linkages within the ASEAN and East Asia.
The Symposium was hosted by Indonesia`s Ministry of Trade (MoT), Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs (MoCSME), and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
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