DTI opens MSMED month in Glan

By BEVERLY C. PAOYON

GLAN, Sarangani (July 2, 2014) – The Department of Trade and Industry provincial office opened its Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development (MSMED) month in Glan on Tuesday (July 1) as an initial event among series of activities for the town’s centennial celebration.

MSMED is the local and expanded version of the nationally-mandated Small and Medium Enterprise Development Week held every third week of July. In Sarangani, activities cover the whole month of July.

DTI provincial director Nenita Barroso said this is MSMED’s 10th year but is the first for Glan to host after they moved the holding of the activities every year in each of the seven municipalities of Sarangani since 2011.

Among the activities conducted were the SME Roving Academy which is a management training program for would-be entrepreneurs, the Diskwento Caravan which provides consumers access to discounted basic goods from 10 to 70 percent, the One-Stop Shop services of Social Security System, Philhealth, Department of Labor and Employment, TESDA, National Food Authority and financing firms, and the Technology Transfer Training.

MSMED, according to Barroso, is aimed at “converging efforts of national government agencies, local government units, private sectors and the MSMEs themselves towards MSME promotion and development.”

Sarangani, she said, is being run by MSMEs recorded at 99 percent. In the country, MSMEs is at 97.6 percent.

Through the program, she hoped that these MSMEs will be encouraged to graduate their businesses into a higher level and draw more entrepreneurs in the province.

There are around 2,000 businesses registered in Sarangani and an estimated 500 are in Glan.

Barroso said the strength of Glan is on tourism being recognized as a destination not only in Sarangani but also in Region 12. The advantage of tourism, she said, is the chain of entrepreneurial potentials and backward linkage attached to it like the inns, food and transportation. (Beverly C. Paoyon/SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)