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Archive -Seychelles

Upcoming and established entrepreneurs can expect access to land and finance |22 September 2017

 

The Minister for Industry, Entrepreneurship Development and Business Innovation Wallace Cosgrow has shared the plans of his ministry through a press conference held yesterday.

This is in line with President Danny Faure’s request for the ministries to open their doors to the media for the members of the public to be aware of what is happening in the ministry and what the public can expect from them.

Present during the press conference held at the Independence House annex was the ministry’s principal secretary Roger Toussaint, chief executive (CEO) of the Small Enterprise Promotion Agency (Senpa) Penny Belmont, CEO of the Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS) Andy Ally, deputy CEO of the Industrial Estate Agency (IEA) Alain Kilindo, the ministry’s director for project implementation, monitoring and evaluation Brian Nicette and senior policy analyst Stephanie Larue.

The Ministry of Industry, Entrepreneurship Development and Business Innovation was set up two months ago and it has been mandated to create policies related to industries, entrepreneurship development as well as small and medium enterprises.

Minister Cosgrow said they are working hard to come up with good policies to help improve these sectors.

“We are working on policies which will have an impact on the business environment and the development of industries. We want to facilitate people’s lives and the way they do business in Seychelles because what they do is important for the development of the country,” he said.

He said the public have huge expectations which they are trying to meet.

“The businesses, young entrepreneurs and established entrepreneurs expect the government to deliver for the environment in which they do business is good, they want access to different business opportunities, they want to be able to operate their business in a fairly easy environment. Their expectations are very high and we are trying to meet as well as manage these expectations given that the resources we have are scarce,” he said.

Two main components which they wish to tackle are the access to land and finance.

Given that land in the main industrial zones we want are limited the ministry wants to look at the districts to locate areas where they can establish light industries and industries that can take place in close proximity to other economic or social development. 

“We want to look at the districts we want to be able to assist more people so we are looking elsewhere for us to be able to decentralise the businesses,” he said.

Minister Cosgrow said not much can be done without finance and credit especially those who are starting up new businesses.

“We are trying to implement grant schemes to assist them and we will ask the government to increase the grants if it is working well.  We also want to put up schemes and policies that will facilitate access to cheap good credit,” he said.

PS Toussaint said there is a need to develop an entrepreneurship culture among the youth.

“The students should be learning about doing business at a young age for them to not only have a mindset of having a career when they end school,” he said.

He also gave brief details on a credit guarantee scheme and a movable property Act which they are considering to implement.

While a policy will be reviewed for Senpa to take on a larger role than it already takes to offer more services and include a larger scope of businesses, SBS will keep supporting the industries and strengthen its partnership with businesses that wish to seek out its help.

The IEA is in the process of identifying new areas of land to cater for the demand as the current slots are already saturated on both Mahé and Praslin.

 

 

 

 

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