Apec member economies asked to step up support for SMEs
CEBU CITY—The Department of Trade and Industry has asked member economies of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) to continue and step up support for initiatives aimed at promoting standards and conformance, as these can serve as a tool to boost the competitiveness of small enterprises.
At the same time, standards and conformance are seen to play a significant role in strengthening regional economic integration, increasing trade flow in Apec economies and providing the micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) wider access to the global market.
Lilian G. Salonga, assistant director at the DTI’s Consumer Protection Bureau, said at the Sub Committee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC) meeting here on Saturday that standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures remained among the issues that affect MSMEs’ participation in the global value chain and engagement in cross-border trade.
This is why the SCSC, she said, has pro-actively sought strong collaboration with the SME working group to engage in capacitive building efforts for member-economies, with the end goal of facilitating trade and the MSME’s participation in the regional global markets.
“SCSC explores activities to capacitate member economies to the alignment of practices to international standards in the area of personnel certification and competency. The on-going initiative of the SCSC on standards and conformance education also provide venue for discussing Apec’s initiatives toward strengthening the capacity standards and conformance by identifying the stakeholders’ requirement,” Salonga added.
The SCSC, according to Salonga, is also aligning its goals with that of the Boracay Action Agenda (BAA), which was aimed at globalizing MSMEs.
“The BAA was endorsed by the Apec trade ministers in Boracay as an action-oriented initiative to support Apec’s on-going work to address the barriers for MSMEs in the international trade, and to facilitate their access to regional and global markets. The BAA also calls for Apec (member economies) to harness synergies across its work streams to maximize the expertise of relevant committees in furthering efforts here in promoting the MSMEs’ growth,” Salonga said.
Harmonized standards and conformance procedures are seen to improve the production efficiency of enterprises, and facilitate the conduct of international trade, resulting in more rapid trade flows, reduced costs and greater integration of production networks, according to Apec.
A study by the Apec Policy Support Unit in 2014 revealed that SMEs in developed, newly industrialized and developing economies indicated weakness in integrating into global value chains in terms of standards and certificates for agriculture and food processing.
According to Apec, the promotion of standards and conformance has been identified as one of the priorities of the SME working group for this year. Collaborating with the SMEWG, the SCSC endorsed a work plan that specified work streams to be pursued by the sub-committee.
