A series of activities to mark the International Day of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) organised by the SME Mauritius Ltd, kicked off, this afternoon, at the Côte d’Or National Sports Complex, in Côte d’Or. A SME Entrepreneur Village, comprising an exhibition of products crafted by trainees and entrepreneurs registered with SME Mauritius Ltd, and stalls providing advice and guides about entrepreneurship, were also launched on that occasion.
The Minister of Industrial Development, SMEs and Cooperatives, Mr. Soomilduth Bholah, the Chief Executive Officer of SME Mauritius, Mr Ravin Rampersad, and other personalities were present at the launching.
In his address, Minister Bholah highlighted that the United Nations International SME Day, celebrated on 27 June each year, aims to raise awareness of the importance of SMEs in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This event will be marked through a series of activities that will take place during this week and will include seminars with different themes in SME Mauritius’s sub-offices around the island.
The Minister further recalled that the theme for International MSME Day 2022, “Resilience and Rebuilding: MSMEs for Sustainable Development”, has as objective to salute entrepreneurs who faced several challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia/Ukraine war and climate change but still managed to remain important contributors to job creation and the economic development of the country, with a contribution of about 50% of total employment worldwide and nearly 35% to that of Mauritius’s Gross Domestic Product and 44% of Mauritius’s total employment.
In addition, Mr Bholah stressed that there is a need to focus on four priority areas for increased support for small businesses, namely, women, youth, digital and green initiatives so that talents of these entrepreneurs are developed and included in the conceptualisation of their business and projects.
Furthermore, the Minister highlighted that SME Mauritius Ltd was revamped to help entrepreneurs address key challenges that SMEs face and thus, it will continue with its support schemes and accompanying measures for SME capacity development.
For his part, CEO Rampersad indicated that even though SMEs are vulnerable to challenges, they are equally creators of strong employment opportunities and contribute to socio-economic development. On that score, he urged entrepreneurs to reinvent and adapt themselves given that changes at the global level are manifold.
Mr Rampersad also added that SME Mauritius is fully committed to advance gender equality and women entrepreneurship so as to accelerate the collective efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of gender equality and empowerment of all women. In this context, SME Mauritius will supervise and support entrepreneurs to face challenges and adopt new technologies in order to diversify their products as well as raise the quality of their products and services.
