Celebrating World MSME Day 2020 amidst a global pandemic
For the last 3 years, the prime objective of World MSME Day declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 is to raise awareness and celebrate the contribution MSME’s make to the global economy and sustainable development.
This year was slightly different. The theme for World MSME Day (27 June 2020) was ‘COVID-19: The Great Lockdown and its impact on Small Business’.
The ‘celebration’ was sombre as we acknowledge that yes, SME’s are the backbone of the economy, they are remarkably agile in response to change, but they are also more vulnerable to major economic turndowns, and require effective business support to recover from a crisis.
According to the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are amongst the most severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes businesses run by women, youth entrepreneurs, and those less economically stable – the same populations that may also be highly vulnerable to the health effects of the pandemic.
In the Pacific Islands, the overall economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region is yet to be fully determined, but the disruption to business, trade and economic wellbeing has and will continue to be significant.
The International Monetary Fund reports that the impact to MSMEs in the Pacific Islands is a combination of a sudden halt to tourism, a severe disruption to supply chains, and a reduction in remittances. These factors coupled with the ongoing effects of climate change and the limited capacity for Pacific Island countries to counter economic disruption of this nature has made for a challenging economic situation.
Business Link Pacific (BLP) exists to connect small and medium-sized (SMEs) in the Pacific Islands with a local business advisor, who can provide them with the best practice advice, support and tools needed to strengthen and increase business growth.
Since the BLP initiative was established by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2017, we have supported over 500 SMEs across Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea and more recently in the Solomon Islands and the Cook Islands, to gain access to quality business advice.
In March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis and to support the Pacific Islands private sector to address COVID-19 challenges and prepare for the future, we implemented a special subsidy support package.
The BLP 100% Subsidy Support package was designed to mitigate the negative impact of COVID-19 by connecting SMEs in the Pacific Islands to local business advice at no cost to the SME or the business advisor. The key areas that the 100% Subsidy focused on were; HR impacts on operations, business contingency and business continuity planning, financial planning, crisis communications and marketing and business coaching.
By providing fully subsidised access to these areas of business advice, we enabled 128 SMEs to remain in business and/or prepare for a sustainable return to business, during an extremely stressful and uncertain time.
Our reasoning for our COVID-19 response was simple: Business advice is more important now than ever.
Our growing network of 98 BLP quality approved advisors across the Pacific Island region is well-positioned to provide information to SMEs about available support packages from national and international governments, identify weaknesses and strengths in businesses, establish new roadmaps, help with innovation, and if necessary, reinvent products and services.
Some key examples of BLP business advisory services supporting SMEs are:
- BLP quality approved business service provider Pandanus Consulting, who provided crisis communication services to BLP’s in-country partner, Vanuatu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council (VBRC) during the COVID-19 and Tropical Cyclone Harold crises. Read the full story HERE.
- BLP approved business advisor Mats Loefvist of Miracle Marketing in Samoa, who worked with Delicious Cakes to implement a functional online presence. The BLP 100% Subsidy Support package was applied to this project so that Delicious Cakes could increase its sales in the current Samoan market, impacted by both a local measles outbreak and the COVID-19 global pandemic.
- With the COVID-19 travel restrictions, lockdown and curfew rules, visitors to Vee’s Organic Farm in Nadi, Fiji, dropped drastically, as did revenue. To support the continuity and recovery of Vee’s Organic Farm, quality approved BLP business advisor Eventuros Fiji is now assisting Vee’s Organic Farm in developing its online presence. Read the full story HERE.
- Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached its peak in the region in mid-March, The Fusion Hub has been urgently requiring an e-commerce platform to remain operational. BLP quality approved advisors Eventuros Fiji assisted The Fusion Hub to set up an e-commerce platform using the BLP COVID-19 100% Subsidy. The subsidy was approved to fast track the completion of this project that started earlier in the year.
We believe that despite the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, a celebration of the resilience of MSME’s is still worth having. Throughout our work in the Pacific Islands over the last 3 years, we have witnessed time and again, the determination, resilience and strong business spirit of Pacific Island-based businesses, and we hope this continues to be the case.
If you’re a Pacific Islands based SME (with between 5 – 50 employees) and you are interested in connecting with a local BLP business advisor, here’s how you can do so:
- Contact your in-country representative for more information.
- Use our free online Essential Business Tools, the Business Health Check and the Business Continuity Planner, to see where there might be gaps in your business that could benefit from quality business advice.
- Visit our website and search through our database of over 98 BLP quality approved business advisors, to see which one meets your needs. BLP approved partners can help you gain access to subsidised business advisory services.