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The Department of Small Business Development in partnership with the Ecosystem Development for Small Enterprise (EDSE) Programme developed the National Integrated Small Enterprise Development (NISED) Masterplan as an overarching policy that seeks to guide and provide strategic policy direction for the country to enhance coordination and targeted support for small businesses with the sole aim to advance economic growth and job creation. The Masterplan has been gazetted after being endorsed by Cabinet.

The NISED masterplan published on 10 May 2022 for comment, offers an unflinchingly honest assessment of government intervention into small business development: “After 20 years, support for small enterprises remains uncoordinated and fragmented with duplication of initiatives based on symptoms and, at best anecdotal evidence. 

Research and data to monitor SMME performance remain elusive at the national level, resulting in the ill-informed design of programmes and support to match SMME needs and opportunities (financial and non-financial).”

“The overall objective of the NISED Masterplan is to coordinate the many actors on essential undertakings as tabled in the National Development Plan (NDP) and the new Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP). 

It is wholly understood that the development and support of small businesses is not the domain of one department but the collective action of many public and private actors.”
Can an integrated ecosystem approach help deliver the goods to sustain the ‘small’ in business? The NISED Masterplan is banking on it.  The Department of Small Business Development calls on all role players in the ecosystem to cease this opportunity to read, consider and comment on the NISED Masterplan. 

Submit your comments by Friday, 10 June 2022. 

Issued by Department of Small Business Development