Awards to include businesses, customers from the outer islands
The Fiji Development Bank’ annual National & Small Medium Enterprise Awards 2023 (NSMEA) will include businesses and customers from the outer islands.
Chief executive officer Saud Minam said the idea was to give outer island customers and businesses an opportunity to attend the award ceremony.
“Not only that, we have also included another category which is
called the Best Agriculture Business SME,” Mr Minam said. “Which basically means that while we continue to focus on agriculture, there are some of these businesses which are also related to agriculture.”
In addition to this, a paperless application system has been introduced for the NSMEA.
Mr Minam said teams from FDB will be on the ground visiting business and customers to assist in submitting online applications for the NSMEA.
“This time around, what we are
trying to do is not only online but we will also have the outreaches from all branches as well.
“We will make sure that our people go over there but we will continue to work on the paperless environment.
“They will carry their own laptops, Wi-Fi and sit down with the customer, take photograph, upload the documents and fill out the application with them.
“One of the main reasons is that it makes it easier for our judges to judge and it is very transparent for everyone to evaluate those applications,”
Mr Minam said.
Deputy prime minister and Minister for Finance Biman Prasad said the NSMEA is important because Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are very important to any economy in terms of employment generation. Mr Prasad said not only are big companies, large enterprises creating employment, MSME and SMEs are also contributing to the employment process.
“Income generation to a large extent also comes from SME. They are very important contributors to the whole supply chain,” Mr Prasad said.
“In essence, MSMEs are not only key drivers of economic development but also economic diversification and as a government, we realise that economic diversification is very important.”
Applications for the NSMEA will be open and readily available on the FDB website.
Deadline for the NSMEA application is June 1, 2024.