KUWAIT: On Monday April 26, 2010 under the Patronage of His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Sabah the Kuwait Economic Society (KESOC) organized a conference titled "Development Plan and future of Small Business and Employment Opportunities Conference."MP Dr. Rola Dashti, the head of the KESOC said, "This conference is an extension to the regional conference for small businesses prepared by the Economic Society which paved the way for the national and regional interest in this Industry. In addition, it helped shed the light on the role of the youth in advancing development."MP Dashti stressed that KESOC is eager to transform the demographic stow, by this she means the minority of the Kuwaiti nationals in the country, into an advantage by supporting the small and medium businesses sector. In addition, this sector proved its efficiency by providing a solution to create productive and stable jobs and opportunities.She added, "It's impossible to attain the support for this direction overnight, since there are many challenges such as restrictive laws, executive procedures and excessive bureaucracy. Despite all these challenges, we will keep moving towards the direction of development." MP Adel Al-Saraawi said, "The global economy is highly dependent on the contributions of small and medium businesses. Small projects are important since they play a major and strategic role in development."In addition, MP Al-Saraawi stressed during the conference on challenges facing small businesses, such as the lack of managerial skills on the part of entrepreneurs, the high establishment cost for the materials, the lack of marketing and development skills, financing, and the poor cooperation between research centers and some ministries.Moreover, Al-Saraawi suggested the establishment of a body dedicated to the sponsorship of small businesses, which contributes 50 percent of paid capital, in a form of loan with no interest, and to finance these projects through a banking system, without burdening provisions by the banks. In addition, the MP called for the establishment of a risk management system that deals with small businesses and that the amount borrowed from the bank for their establishment shall not exceed the amount of the paid capital by the entrepreneur.To support small projects he also suggested to customs and tax exemptions, exporting the products of these businesses, Facilitate the process of getting licenses by the government side.Abdullah Al-Otaibi, the small businesses portfolio manager at the Industrial Bank, presented a paper that stressed the importance of small businesses, which represent 35 to 45 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) of some countries and represent 60 percent of the recruitment rate, since these projects are highly dependent on the labor density.Al-Otaibi added, "The state of Kuwait provided the required financing to small businesses through the establishment of a number of portfolios to support these businesses with a total capital of 250 million Kuwaiti dinars. This includes the establishment a portfolio managed based on the Islamic finance laws with a capital of KD 50 million managed by the Industrial Banks."Al-Otaibi explained the definition of small projects according to the bank's perspective, and those are projects where the invested capital does not exceed KD 500,000 and where the aim is to transfer raw materials into a product or a semi-product or an intermediary product, or the transfer of semi or intermediary products to products, or to offer maintenance or artificial work.He also shed light on the volume of small businesses financed by the bank through the portfolio until March 31, 2010 which is equal to KD 36.4 million while total cumulative approvals for the volume of funding is KD 25.3 million. On the sidelines of the conference, Al Watan daily had a conversation with Dr. Atef El Shabrawi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Family Bank of Bahrain, who explained the relationship between corporate governance and supporting entrepreneurship. "Entrepreneurship helps in the economic development process. The most important issue is to organize our priorities and the main priority is to create parallel development that includes promoting entrepreneurship and corporate governance and to ensure proper development, provided that the government is investing in human capital and education." El Shabrawi urges the youth to start their own projects and determine their objectives in life and to visualize their projects outcome to succeed.
Source: AlWatanDaily
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