Strategic growth concepts for small business highlighted

Business Recorder: Friday October 09, 2009

MULTAN (October 09 2009): "If we want to bring our economy back on the track, we will have to promote innovative activities for our nation's small businesses," Senior Vice President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI), Khawaja Muhammad Usman, said this while addressing a meeting of executive committee of MCCI. In which Business Enabling Environment experts, Asma Malik Deputy component leader, Azeem Niazi and Muhammad Azim were the guests on the occasion.
Mr Usman said that a survey report revealed that the reasons most cited were high cost, lack of time and not knowing where to begin. Strategic growth concepts is striving to change those results. With the largest percentage of businesses today having less than five employees and little, if any, start up capital, it is imperative that small business owners should be aware of using the technology tools and resources available to aid them in growing their businesses, he added.
This technology can teach them how to maximise their businesses resources (both human and financial) and provide them with the tools to do so. Khwaja Usman further stated, "Business owners need to be aware that today's technology allows them to work virtually, from the comfort of their own homes if they like, but yet to perform and appear as if they are a much larger organisation. This builds their credibility and enables them to grow their business at a much faster pace."
As part of strategic's effort to educate small business via this technology, 'Strategic Growth Concepts for Small Business'. These things will focus on topics of interest to small businesses and will feature experts in each topic area. The experts said that the objective of our work is to promote reforms that support private sector development.
"We provide advisory services to clients in the public and private sectors in developing countries, and support USAID operational units with their reform efforts. We target the most critical areas affecting local businesses, such as burdensome business regulations, and bring small businesses into the public-private dialogue.
We aim to be a knowledge centre in the area of implementing business environment reforms. We collect, summarise, and analyse various data on the successes and failures of business environment reform efforts, and develop practical guides for designing and implementing these reforms. We are currently focusing on business registration, business licensing, business inspections, municipal simplification, corporate tax administration, export/import procedures, building the capacity of business membership organisations, and alternative dispute resolution.
It discusses strategies and options to facilitate small business compliance with the tax system. It thus addresses one-although a particularly important-element of MSE formalisation." It also provides practitioners with framework and tools to use communications strategically with the goal of building support and ownership.