DTI allots P21M to improve business environment for SMEs in Luzon, Mindanao

The Department of Trade and Industry has earmarked a total of P21 million—P8 million in 2012 and P13 million in 2013—for its Local and Regional Economic Development program to promote competitiveness in local government units in Luzon and Mindanao.

LRED is a participative process by which stakeholders from both public and private sectors are mobilized to become partners in a joint effort to improve the economy of a locality and increase its competitiveness.

Trade Undersecretary Merly Cruz said that the department is intensifying the upscaling of LRED to make the business environment in the two regions more favorable for small enterprises nationwide. The program may have played a part in the rise in the competitiveness index of 71 percent of LGUs recently surveyed in the Visayas.

“This development, when replicated more broadly across the country, can have greater positive impact in the now-improving Philippine competitiveness ranking globally,” Cruz said.

The DTI and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), a German cooperation services provider for sustainable development, has been implementing the LRED approach among 84 LGUs in the Visayas for the past eight years.

In 2003, the Philippine government, in partnership with the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), initiated PSP SMEDSEP, a private sector promotion program to create a more favorable business environment for SMEs in the Visayas. — BM, GMA News