The Botswana Government and the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) have pointed out the need to develop and nurture the Small Medium Enterprises (SMME’s) in order to list their entities in the stock market.
BSE Chief Executive Officer Thapelo Tsheole told Sunday Standard that SMME’s have the potential to grow into giant entities adding that there is need for more knowledge to be imparted on them.
He stated that they are looking forward to a more improved type of listing in the following year saying they have so far been buoyed by the growing interest from SMME’s.
He said the slow interest from citizen owned companies to list in the exchange can be attributed to lack of financial literacy from a young age.
He highlighted that they have argued over the years that financial literacy should be encompassed in the school curriculum.
“People grow up without interacting with any form of financial literacy and therefore it is true that it is one of the contributors of poor financial literacy but also because the structure of the economy is in such a way that is dominated by unstructured SMME’s,”said Tsheole.
Tsheole further emphasized the need to increase the number of locally owned business in the stock exchange.
For his part, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Entrepreneurship Joel Ramaphoi acknowledged that even though there is a lot that can still be done in order to grow SMME’s and ultimately list in the stock exchange, government has identified key policy interventions with which to develop SMME’s.
“One of the key policies that I can talk about are guided by three priorities, one is the entrepreneurial mindset change, secondly value chain development and thirdly is economic inclusion,” added Ramaphoi.
He stated that inculcating the spirit of entrepreneurship at a tender age can also be helpful adding that this will encourage locals to operate on a large scale to create further opportunities.
“We need to identify areas which stifle the growth of our SMME’s and see how best they can be addressed because SMME’s have the potential to create wealth for this country and that is why we are hell-bent to ensure that they are assisted to maximize,” said Ramaphoi.
He further indicated that they are continuously exploring and seeking alternative ways to speed up small businesses adding that their job is made simpler by the fact that small businesses also have interest in expanding their entities.
