Innovative Partnerships to Foster Small Enterprise, Promote Economic Growth, and Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries
The role of industry in fighting poverty and achieving progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is of critical importance. I am convinced that the path to sustained poverty reduction is to create wealth by empowering the private sector to invest in the productive sectors such as manufacturing and the production of higher value-added products, within an enabling policy and regulatory framework established by government. There can be no sustained poverty reduction without capability building, productivity growth and the development of competitive production structures. In this regard, industry has the potential to contribute to many of the MDGs, through generating employment, raising income and providing essential products for the poor such as processed food products, pharmaceutical products, shelter, fertilizers, irrigation and essential low-priced consumer products.
It is also important to emphasize the significance of domestic entrepreneurship in developing countries and the need to reduce the widespread informality of economies. The challenge presents itself at two levels: first the need to dynamise economic development in a bottom-up process, especially through small enterprise development, and secondly, the need to engage global business players in effective linkages and broader partnerships for development.
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