Programme fosters sustainable SME growth

Oct 28th at 14:54
28-10-2017 14:54:35+07:00

Programme fosters sustainable SME growth

The Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) programme has benefited participating factories by helping cut costs, improve workplace co-operation, increase productivity and reduce employee turnover rate, a forum heard in HCM City on Friday.

 

SCORE is a global ILO-backed technical co-operation programme that is going in many countries like China, Indonesia, Viet Nam, India, Colombia, and Malaysia.

Its goals are to help small and medium-d enterprises improve productivity and working conditions, enhancing their long-term competitiveness.

Vo Tan Thanh, director of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s HCM City branch, said with financial support from Norway and Switzerland, since 2011 VCCI-HCM City and SCORE have been organising training and consultancy programmes for SMEs in the wood processing sector in Binh Duong, Binh Dinh, Dong Nai, Long An, and HCM City.

Recently the programme has expanded to support the garment and supporting industries in HCM City and Dong Nai Province.

Chang Hee Lee, ILO director for Vietnam, said since 2011 SCORE has focused on initiating and supporting an improvement in workshop layout and operations, quality management, cleaner production and safe and healthy working environment through nurturing, facilitating and embedding worker-management dialogue processes at the workplace.

“Altogether 146 companies have participated so far, 1,150 staff and workers have been trained and 91 per cent of trained companies reported significant cost saving.”

Above all, the project has been “instrumental in creating and spreading business culture innovation for better performance of SMEs,” he told the forum titled “Improving productivity for integration into the global value chains.”

As the CEO of one of the wood processing companies participating in the programme since 2014, Le Van Minh of Tuong Van Co.Ltd said it participated in modules 1 (workplace co-operation), 2 (quality management) and 5 (safety and healthy at work) of the programme, and he is happy with the results.

The programme has helped his company with “successful arrangement of the chair production line with reduction of takt time from 14 to nine days.”

In addition, through modules 1 and 2, the company is able to save VND840 million a year on average, he said.

“The biggest value from the project is the Kaizen culture and co-operative spirit at the workplace.”

Minh Man Printing Co., Ltd is also happy with the results of the programme after participating for three months.

Truong Thu Tram, its deputy director, said the programme had created a spirit of self-consciousness and pro-activeness in all employees in implementing 5S-Kaizen.

“The working environment is always clean and safe, bringing high efficiency in production.”

Lee said SMEs account for 97 per cent of enterprises in Viet Nam. Unlike State-owned enterprises and foreign firms, they face numerous challenges in terms of access to bank loans, markets, advanced technologies and productivity-enhancing techniques.

“Often they are outside the global supply chains and even when they are inside, they are at the bottom layer of the global production chains, struggling to survive with low productivity.

“Creating enabling environment for sustainable development of SMEs is a key to the sustainable development of Viet Nam.”

Organised by VCCI-HCM City and ILO, the forum wrapped up SCORE phase II, and also discussed opportunities and challenges for SMEs when participating in global value chains and inquiries by international buyers, and introduced a strategic framework to support enterprises in the programme’s new phase.

Phases I and II have done an outstanding job of demonstrating that SMEs can improve their productivity and working conditions through labour-management co-operation.

Building on the success, SCORE’s phase III aims at upscaling its impacts, firstly by embedding SCORE training in national training programmes with support from the SCORE National Centre hosted by the VCCI and secondly by leading multinational buyers to support SCORE training in their supply chains.

bizhub



NEWS SAME CATEGORY

VN, Canada discuss boosting trade

Officials from Viet Nam and Canada discussed boosting trade and mutual investment between the two countries at a seminar in Toronto on Thursday.

RoK businesses explore investment in Binh Duong Province

Mando’s CEO and president Sung Il-mo, along with representatives of over 80 businesses from the Republic of Korea (RoK), held a working session with provincial...

FIA, INCHAM co-operate in investment promotion

The Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) and the Indian Business Association in Viet Nam (INCHAM) inked a memorandum of...

Firms wary of switch to e-invoices

The Ministry of Finance is drafting regulations on e-bills and will ask the Government to set a deadline of July 2018 for businesses to switch over from paper. But...

Lam Dong solicits green investment at conference

Lam Dong Province would like to attract investment in green energy and technology, a conference on investment promotion held by the Central Highlands province in...

HCM City promotes trade, investment in Australia

HCM City’s business climate and business development strategies were introduced at an Investment-Trade-Tourism Promotion conference in Sydney, Australia, on...

HCM City enhances PPP model

Public Private Partnership (PPP), a funding model for public infrastructure projects, is significant in the development process of Viet Nam, in general, and HCM...

Viet Nam, Italy enhance co-operation over financial supervision

Viet Nam and Italy agreed to enhance co-operation in financial supervision activities and to exchange information in the sector and securities market.

Becoming a smart city will fix HCM City’s problems: official

HCM City would be able to cope with the many challenges caused by the rapid increase in its migrant population when becoming a smart city, a conference heard on...

Japan invests big in Binh Duong

Japan remains the second-biggest investor in the southern province of Binh Duong with a total of 249 projects, worth US$5.2 billion, according to the provincial...


MOST READ


Back To Top