MSMEs need greater online presence
There is a need for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to work on their online presence.
Speaking during the virtual launch of the UNDP’s Future Tourism: Rethinking Tourism and MSMEs in times of COVID-19, Lisa Harding, Coordinator for MSMEs at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), spoke on the reliance on digital transactions as she believed this was critical at this particular time.
She noted that many of the MSMEs were informal and did not have e-commerce options, in terms of not only the systems but understanding how it worked and having support on platforms.
Harding believed that this hindered regional and global export opportunities.
“In a lot of the sectors in terms of agriculture, small micro enterprises, a lot of the artisanal and handmade craftsmen and so on, a lot of those persons are really excluded from participating in an online market and don’t have an online presence,” she said.
“Even where there are websites, we are always stuck at how do we get paid, how do the MSMEs receive funds for their transactions, especially with the regulations not in place in terms of being able to access PayPal and various other regional options. It really has left a lot of the MSMEs excluded from this very important space and has created a great divide between our region and the rest of the world in terms of the online e-commerce opportunities.
“So I really just think for me this is a major area and if we can work alongside having the right policy environment to remove the bottlenecks and stimulate that further, I think that that would go a really long way.”
Amanda Charles, Sustainable Tourism Specialist at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), expressed that trends for tourism recovery and the revitalisation and re-imagining of tourism in the Caribbean showed the need for MSMEs to have more visibility online and to have an online presence.
She expressed that it was her hope that the project launched by the UNDP recently, included capacity building as it related to training the MSMEs to be more fluent in the use of computers and ICTs.