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Entrepreneurship is important for many reasons, from promoting social change to driving innovation. Great entrepreneurs create jobs and contribute to the growing economy. They can also change the way we live and work by spearheading forward-thinking. As the CHIETA, we understand the critical role that entrepreneurs and small businesses play thus we are always looking for interventions that will increase their participation in the mainstream economy.

We have undertaken research that indicates that 97.5% of all businesses in our country are small to medium enterprises. These small to medium enterprises (SMMEs) contribute 35% to the GDP of the South African economy.

Alarmingly, we have also seen data that indicates that 90% of these SMMEs are struggling to survive, and SMME bank subsidies have skyrocketed by more than 50% in the second half of the uncertain period that was 2020. Given the role that SMMEs play in job creation and economic transformation, this data extremely concerning.

There is also growing evidence to support the notion that, with added training support and mentorship, which includes business financing, small businesses are likely to survive, grow and create employment opportunities for our learnership programme graduates.

That is why we, as the Chemical SETA, have taken deliberate action to disperse Discretionary Grants in support of an integrated small business development programme, which culminated in the establishment of our strategic partnership with the University of Johannesburg’s Centre of Entrepreneurship in 2020.

Through this partnership, we identified 50 SMMEs to participate in our 18-month virtual incubator programme, which consists of 5 elements namely:

• Incubator and infrastructure support
• Business training in the form of a short course at NQF level 5
• Technical skills training
• Market linkages support
• Advisory coaching and Mentoring support

To date, the programme, which will culminate in a graduation ceremony at the end of our financial year, has been a resounding success. One of the highlights was an increase in the sustainability of the participating SMMEs, with 64% of them reporting a 25% increase in their top-line revenue. These enterprises are involved in the manufacturing of chemical detergents, beauty products and health supplement products. Because they can manufacture these products, it enables them to make a significant contribution to the growth in the chemical sector.

With this success in mind, our organisation is committed to renewing this partnership as well as the programme and to scale it so that we can support a larger pool of entrepreneurs in the chemical and other industries moving forward. As we look to the future, we will be making it our business to continue to understand the needs and priorities of SMMEs, so that we can offer them both financial and non-financial support to their growth. Our aim as an organisation is to develop strategies that will enable us to play our part in contributing meaningfully to the transformation and sustainability of all sectors in the South African economy.

We also want to strengthen collaboration with our sister organisations in other sectors, to enable us to streamline our strategic plans, as well as how to effectively scale them and roll them out. Through this collective effort as SETAs, we will be able to have a more meaningful and far-reaching impact on driving entrepreneurship in our country. So that we can participate actively in alleviating unemployment and poverty for this generation and generations to follow.

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