As the deadline for comments on the draft National Integrated Small Enterprise Development (NISED) Masterplan approaches, SAnews examines the strategy, which aims to increase small business participation in the formal economy, reduce red tape, and promote ease of doing business, particularly for small entrepreneurs.
The NISED Masterplan’s overall goal is to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to work on critical projects outlined in the National Development Plan (NDP) and the new Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP).
“I am confident that this NISED Masterplan will rapidly and fundamentally shift the dial on the country’s growth, unemployment and inequality crisis, and move us to a more prosperous economy for all,” Minister of Small Business Development, Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams said on the final draft of the NISED.
“It is wholly understood that the development and support of small businesses is not the domain of one department but the collective action of many public and private actors.
“Coordinating the efforts of many will not be an easy task, but it must be done to ensure that we achieve our goals of a prosperous and transformed South Africa to catalyse a speedier course in tackling the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment,” Ndabeni-Abrahams said.
The NISED Masterplan aims to complement and work in tandem with the ERRP and several Sector Masterplans, enhancing national output and employment by increasing the participation of Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs).
In 2005, the first Integrated Strategy for Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses was adopted.
The strategy, as well as the subsequent NISED, implement the White Paper on the National Strategy for the Development and Promotion of Small Business in South Africa, which was published in 1995.
The NISED will take the place of the present Integrated Strategy for Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses once it is adopted. It will serve as a coordination framework for the essential ecosystem participants involved in the development of small businesses. It directs the coordination mechanism that will direct all small business support programs.
The NISED is the result of extensive consultation with key government departments at the national, provincial, and local levels, as well as business, labor, academics, and other relevant institutions.
Members of the public can send their comments to nisedm@dsbd.gov.za or hand them in to the Policy Unit, Department of Small Business Development, 77 Meintjies Street, Sunnyside, Pretoria, within 30 days of the notice being published on the government notifications.
The NISED Masterplan is available in an abridged form on the Department of Small Business Development’s website at www.dsbd.gov.za, and the complete version is available for public comment in the Gazette.