THE
Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB) and Standard Chartered Bank (SCB)
yesterday started a 15-month workshop and financial clinic to help established
small and medium enterprises and startups with developing the financial skills
needed to internationalise.
Held at the iCentre yesterday, the first of
the series of workshops kicked off with honing the entrepreneurs' basic skill
of understanding financial statements.
"This is one of the biggest challenges,
that local and foreign SMEs have and this is something that many are not so
savvy about, and this is one of the issues that we are trying to address at the
BEDB," said Sheikh Rashid Salam, head of marketing and investment
promotion at the BEDB.
The training consists of two parts: the
workshop, and the financial clinic where participants are given a 15-minute
one-on-one session with financial experts to talk specifically about their
business.
Sheikh Rashid said the workshop and financial
clinic ultimately aim to equip the participants with all the right skills.
"Our ultimate aim is called 'Promising
Local Development Scheme (PLEDS)', where we want to see companies in Brunei
internationalise," he said.
He added that the BEDB has seen the potential
in some SMEs that have been around over the past 20 to 30 years, but which are
relatively unknown elsewhere.
"We are telling them that it is time, but
in building these companies, they need to be nurtured and groomed at an early
stage," said Sheikh Rashid, adding that SMEs need to be equipped with the
proper accounting skills and proper audited cash flows, and to set up a
marketing department to help with the growth of their companies.
"We are not the experts in this, which is
why we have linked up with SCB who are willing to invest their time, effort and
resources, in building up these skills," he said.
Lai Pei-Si,chief executive officer of SCB,
said that the course is designed for 15 months to allow participants to build
the foundation for running a business.
She added that the bank would be utilising
their international status to bring in foreign counterparts who could conduct
the workshops and to allow participants to learn the best practices or gain
advice from a foreign perspective.
"I think to go beyond the domestic
market, you would first need to get the foundation of business right, and it is
really about knowing a product, identify your right target market and to
understand your market properly," said Lai.
She added that being financially savvy would
include teaching SMEs to know how to read their profit and loss statements, and
using those figures to calculate the key ratios from the statements.
"They need to know how to see the 'real
health' of the business, and from the statements to see whether they are
earning more than they own, and so on, and these are foundations to help you
build a solid business," she said.
"We are here to try to assist in three
ways; capital, competency and connectivity," said Sheikh Rashid.
He said that connectivity will be addressed
through this workshop by networking during the workshop, competency will be
done via the workshops and financial clinics, and with capital, that is where
the banks come in to help address it.
He also revealed that the next sessions would
also touch on non-financial related issues.
"We also want to touch on
regulatory-related issues such as foreign trade agreements, things like
Rampaian licences, labour quotas and so on," he said.
DEBBIE TOO
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
The Brunei Times
Business & Investment Opportunities
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