On September 6, Procter & Gamble (P&G), an American consumer goods corporation, organized a seminar on P&G SME Leadership College and launched the Signal Accelerator in Vietnam, creating chances for SMEs to join the global creative playground. In this environment, SMEs would compete with other enterprises in the world to become P&G’s partners to be funded to develop their plans and provided access to the global business opportunities.
Nguyen Hoa Cuong, deputy head of the Enterprise Development Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment said that building SME community to develop the national economy is the top priority of the government of Vietnam, which has been one of the most important goals discussed among APEC SME Ministers this year.
Omar Channawi, Vice President of P&G Asia-Pacific speaks at the seminar.
Omar Channawi, P&G’s vice president of the Asia Pacific region, said that P&G’s programs would help Vietnam’s SMEs enhance their management and competition ability as well as accompany P&G to get access to global business opportunities.
At the seminar, Head of SMEs Department Le Van Khuong said that since 2001, many policies and mechanisms, especially law on support for SMEs and Regulation No 56/2009/NĐ-CP with eight policies, have been issued. For instance, SMEs are entitled to preferential loans with 1-2 per cent lower in the interest rate compared to that of other enterprises.
However, according to Le Van Khuong, the state agencies need to support SMEs more so that they can easily develop as the supporting programs have not been suitable and effective while SMEs still face a lot of difficulties, especially in renting production sites.
Besides, there are still complicated tax and accounting procedures and unreasonable business conditions, depressing SMEs. Therefore, the government has strived to reform those procedures, especially cutting business costs to create favorable conditions for enterprises to develop.
