News

The Philippines — The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Philippine government agency primarily mandated to promote economic development of the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE), a private sector initiative with a nationwide, huge outreach supporting the country through entrepreneurship development and creating an entrepreneurial culture, thus, shaping MSMEs into competitive businesses with the right mindset and know-how.  Operating in the Philippines, which has consistently stayed in the top three spot among 170 countries in terms of vulnerability to climate change, requires more than resource efficiency and innovativeness for MSMEs to become competitive and world class.  MSMEs have to integrate green a economic development (GED) approach embracing both mitigation and adaptation into their business strategies.

The MOU signing assures the business community that these two primary institutions for MSME development will together look at ways and means to make MSMEs more competitive through GED and mainstream the learnings in programs catering to MSMEs.  DTI, with support from the Promotion of Green Economic Development Project, a joint project with the GIZ financed by BMZ, will enhance the messaging of PCE activities with GED, sensitize participating `entrepreneurs in the topic of green growth and provide inputs through general information and basic capacity building on green businesses.  The PCE on the other hand, through its banner project Go Negosyo, will include GED in their “PCE enterprise summits”, “Negosyo seminar activities” and “Go Negosyo building enterprise students for tomorrow events”.

The key players in the agreement, DTI Undersecretary Zenaida Maglaya, PCE Executive Director Ramon Lopez and GIZ ProGED Project Manager Volker Steigerwald strongly believe that through this partnership, the MSMEs would be effectively supported to move into a more competitive and at the same time more sustainable way of doing business in the Philippines.

By Raquel Capio, Promotion of Green Economic Development (ProGED)