Ingredients for successful SMMEs

Skills such as innovation and risk taking should not be overlooked as essential ingredients to small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs). Business failure is often attributed to the lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills such as innovation and risk taking and therefore should not be overlooked as essential ingredients for successful SMMEs.

The Department of Small Business Development will place more emphasis on the development of small businesses and facilitating access to finance and market support. The ministry is aimed to remove regulatory constraints and tackle laws that inhibit the growth of entrepreneurs.

Low levels of education and training, as well as poor business skills were contributing factors. To address the skills challenge, my the department has embarked on a journey to develop entrepreneurs. Together with Technical Vocational Education and Training Colleges (TVET), the department is launching Centres of Entrepreneurship across all the provinces.

In 2015, the department launched centres in False Bay College (Western Cape) and Gert Sibande College (Mpumalanga) focusing on the hospitality sector, while Centres of Entrepreneurship have been planned for the North West and KwaZulu-Natal.

It is encouraging to observe survey results revealing a marked change in the SA start-up landscape, with an increase in black entrepreneurs. Despite the upward trend in the number of SMMEs registered since 2000, there is growing consensus that South Africa’s business activity rate still lags behind its BRICS peers.

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