CAPE TOWN, South Africa, July 5, 2023/ — Applications for the Western Cape Government’s (WCG) 2023 Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) Booster fund, close in one week, on Tuesday, 11 July 2023, at midnight.
To apply please click on the following link: https://dedat-funding.westerncape.gov.za/#/
Run by the Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT), this programme has assisted 860 SMMEs since 2019, thereby helping to sustain 4 977 jobs. In addition to this, the Booster Fund has also helped these SMMEs to grow, creating an additional 651 jobs.
One of my top priorities is to support entrepreneurs and SMMEs precisely because they are the driving force behind economic growth and job creation in the Western Cape and South Africa.
This year, the SMME Booster Fund will focus specifically on support projects and programmes aimed at growing and developing SMMEs, in the following categories:
- Exporter development
- Women-owned businesses
- Youth-owned businesses
- Township-based businesses
The SMME Booster Fund is just one of the ways we support small businesses in the province. Over the last week, I have had the great pleasure of speaking to the work we do to support and enable small businesses as well as to remove barriers to their success, at two fantastic events.
The first was the SMME Summit, held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre which gathered more than 1 500 small business owners, government leaders, and experts in business development and planning to exchange ideas and find ways to address current challenges facing the SMME sector.
The second opportunity was at entrepreneur networking event in Khayelitsha, hosted by The Silulo Foundation which does impressive work to provide access to opportunities, information, and skills development to aspiring small business owners and community members, particularly in townships and rural areas.
Overall, the WCG is determined to make the province the easiest place to do business in the country. As a part of achieving this, we have recently adopted a new and ambitious economic plan of action, which we call ‘Growth for Jobs’.
By 2035, we aim to have built a trillion-rand jobs-rich, inclusive, sustainable, diverse, and resilient provincial economy that is growing at between four and six per cent per year.
At the heart of this is the understanding that government’s role is to make it as easy as possible for the private sector, especially SMMEs, to grow and create jobs.
Which is why I urge entrepreneurs and business owners to keep an eye out for the various programmes we run to support SMMEs on our ‘Sector Support’ webpage and also to contact us if they need assistance with cutting red tape, on redtape@westerncape.gov.za(link sends e-mail).
By improving the foundations of growth, by supporting SMMEs and by removing barriers to their growth, we can achieve higher growth rates and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs that we need to pull more people out of poverty and into a life of opportunity and hope.
