Dato Lim Jock Hoi, Secretary-General of ASEAN
April 18, 2022
The significant and far-reaching impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have severely impacted ASEAN residents and businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Over the past two years, tens of millions of small business owners in Southeast Asia have struggled to remain afloat as operations have come to a halt as a result of pandemic measures. The severity of the crisis has put our small and medium-sized enterprises in completely uncharted territory. The Asian Development Bank reported that as many as 70% of small and medium-sized enterprises within the region suspended their operations during this era.
SMEs are the backbone of the ASEAN economy; they constitute over 97% of enterprises in ASEAN and are a major source of employment. Our never-ending mission is to assist our small and medium-sized businesses stay inspired and uplifted during this unprecedented crisis. Vibrant, prosperous and competitive enterprises from the small and medium-sized enterprise sector are of fundamental importance for the continual economic growth and development of the region.
In every crisis there may be an important opportunity.
Indeed, this global health pandemic is difficult. However, our small and medium-sized businesses have shown incredible resilience throughout and proceed to encourage the region to construct back higher. Their creativity and determination enabled them to keep up revenues in difficult circumstances and seize latest opportunities because the economy step by step recovered.
Huong Giang is a garments seller in front of Thai Nguyen University of Education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the shop saw a major drop in sales because it lost its core customers after the college closed to stop the spread of the virus. To keep the corporate afloat, Huong Giang went digital, selling her products online through Facebook, as taught in her Go-Digital ASEAN training course. Her efforts brought positive results. Her sales returned to normal, and at the identical time she gained a major number of latest customers who connected with purchasing her products through her social media.
As within the case of Huong Giang, many firms used digital technologies to keep up their operations and even saw a rise in sales as they acquired a major number of latest customers who could access their services online.
The pandemic has actually accelerated ASEAN’s transition to a digital economy and society. By the tip of 2021, the region saw a 62% increase within the gross merchandise value of e-commerce. An astonishing 60 million people in Southeast Asia have gone digital for the primary time – an unprecedented increase in comparison with the 100 million latest web users accrued within the previous five years and cementing ASEAN’s position because the world’s leading web market.
Our thriving digital market has also attracted global technology capitals to speculate within the region. Often, small and medium-sized enterprises are an indispensable a part of the activities of those firms. However, Amazon Web Services reported that 90% of small and medium-sized enterprises in Southeast Asia recognize the necessity to improve their digital skills. Google also emphasized that for the regional digital economy to develop, an ecosystem of cooperation between communities, in addition to the private and non-private sectors, is crucial. Asean is due to this fact committed to working with our partners to boost the capability of our small and medium-sized enterprises to navigate the digital era.
ASEAN is taking concrete steps to make digital transformation inclusive and useful for all. Last 12 months we adopted the so-called Bandara Seri Begawana Action Planwhich presents an initiative to equip SMEs with the appropriate skills to embrace the brand new normal, remain competitive and prepare for future crises.
ASEAN SME Academy: The first online learning platform for small and medium-sized enterprises
With a shared vision and mission to support the expansion and expansion of our small and medium-sized enterprises in order that they’ll thrive and proceed to contribute to the region’s prosperity, ASEAN has gathered the support of the US-ASEAN Business Council (US-ABC) and the US government to launch the ASEAN SME Academy ( Academy) since 2016. The Academy offers entrepreneurship education schemes that help SMEs within the small and medium-sized enterprise sector develop their businesses. The platform brings together online courses from large multinational corporations reminiscent of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Visa and Mastercard on topics starting from finance, operations, marketing and logistics to digital tools. Access to the course for small and medium-sized enterprises is free and has to this point attracted 465,000 visits and 10,000 users across the ASEAN region.
The Academy equips small and medium-sized enterprises with skills and methods that may help them increase their sales volume and market reach. An example of this success is Yulia Prayanti, a 26-year-old Academy participant and entrepreneur from Lombok, Indonesia. She expanded her snack business beyond her hometown when she learned to make use of social media to sell her products through the Academy. Orders are currently being collected from locations so far as Sumbawa, Kalimantan and Central Java.
ASEAN SME Academy 2.0: Learn anytime, anywhere
The pandemic makes the Academy far more relevant for small and medium-sized enterprises today and offers us an incentive to proceed working even higher. The partnership goals to modernize the Academy to achieve a wider audience through a redesigned platform that’s student-friendly, content-rich and inclusive. As a result, the renovated platform, ASEAN SME Academy 2.0, was launched on April 8, 2022 with the aim of becoming Southeast Asia’s one-stop online platform for SME-related ideas and resources.
The modernized platform is now mobile-friendly, has low bandwidth requirements and enables learning anywhere, anytime, even in distant areas. With this update, the platform also offers multilingual support in Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese and the chance to receive a globally recognized certification that may help them stay relevant and competitive within the job market.
Build back higher and stronger by upskilling ASEAN SMEs
As digitalization transforms every aspect of business and society, it’s crucial for small and medium-sized enterprises in ASEAN to leverage this technology and optimize their business development. Participating within the digital economy is now crucial for small and medium-sized enterprises not only to survive the pandemic crisis, but additionally to seize latest opportunities.
The ASEAN Academy 2.0 is an important example of an ASEAN initiative that directly supports upskilling our workforce and enables businesses to seize opportunities in a post-pandemic world. We encourage you to hearken to stories like Julia’s and hope that more small and medium-sized enterprises will join others on this journey towards digital transformation and economic recovery by leveraging the tutorial tools offered by ASEAN SME Academy 2.0.
The ASEAN SME Academy is offered on the link https://asean-sme-academy.org/
