[6 August 2017] –The “ASEAN MSME Development Summit” was held on 14 July 2017 in the Philippines the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to advance the promotion and development of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the ASEAN region.

Under the Summit’s theme “7Ms Towards Shared Prosperity in ASEAN,” the Philippines laid out a seven-point strategy essential for MSME development—mindset, mastery, mentoring, markets, money, machines, and models—which the country wants the region to adopt to advance the ASEAN economic agenda of shared prosperity. “The Philippines has been in the forefront of providing substantive initiatives toward establishing MSMEs at the core of the ASEAN economic agenda. We want to elevate discussions and provide the right information on how we can further assist them to support our goal of achieving inclusive growth in ASEAN,” said ASEAN Economic Ministers chairman and DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez.

Economica Vietnam,  represented by Mr. Le Duy Binh, was invited to provide inputs and to act as keynote speaker at the Summit.  The inputs by Economica Vietnam was focus on “What Mindsets get in the way in MSME Development and Entrepreneurship Promotion”.  

The ASEAN MSME Development Summit was organized by the ASEAN Committee on Business and Investment Promotion (CBIP), which is chaired by the DTI, and the DTI Bureau of Small and Medium Enterprise Development (BSMED).

The Summit gathered more than 1,000 representatives from the private sector, civil society, and ASEAN governments to develop new ideas and identify areas of improvement to successfully place MSMEs in the vanguard of the ASEAN Economic Community’s (AEC) drive to achieve inclusive growth.

The development of MSMEs is integral to sustaining the economic development in ASEAN since MSMEs comprise most of the businesses in the region’s aggregate regional economy, accounting for over 90 percent of all the domestic firms and 75 to 90 percent of the non-agricultural workforce.