06 Jul 2026

Maun Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) branch manager, Mr Outlwile Ebutswe has underscored the need to have an effective business ecosystem to ensure a thriving small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs).

Through collaboration and partnerships, he said SMMEs could enjoy coordinated support and targeted market opportunities among others.

He made the remarks on Friday when briefing the North West district councillors about the national proposal on SMME Mandatory Registration which aims to strengthen the country’s enterprise development ecosystem and support the long term economic transformation agenda.

The proposal aims to establish a comprehensive national SMME database and improve access to support services, finance and markets. 

While he appreciates the critical role played by the SMMEs in contributing to the economy and job creation, Mr Ebutswe mentioned some common challenges hampering SMMEs growth citing access to finance, limited access to markets, lack of business and technical skill, competition threats, policy and regulatory bottlenecks among others.

Acknowledging efforts by LEA in promoting entrepreneurship growth and accelerate sustainable growth of SMMEs through its services such as mentoring and coaching, business advisory, training and policy advocacy, he emphasised the importance of creating an effective ecosystem where government policies, financial institutions and private sector among others interact and provide a supportive environment. 

“Small businesses are the engines of future economic growth and they are facing a number of challenges that impact their growth and sustainability. In order for small businesses to thrive, it requires a supportive entrepreneurship ecosystem hence the introduction of the mandatory registration exercise which will help create a credible national database that enhances data integrity, enables evidence based policy formulation and improves coordination across ministries, agencies and development partners,” he added.

Mr Ebutswe further stated that the mandatory registration would also provide measurement of SMMEs impact and economic contribution, strengthen institutional ecosystem coordination and efficiency as well as support economic diversification and job creation.

He said they had done some benchmarking trips and observed that the initiative was working wonders in other countries such as India, Kenya, Rwanda and Mauritius as they had even introduced some incentives and benefits.

The countries offer some benefits such as tax incentives, waiver on penalties and interest, concessional loan schemes reservation scheme of 20 per cent government tenders and custom duty exemption on production equipment.

In India, he highlighted that SMMEs enjoyed  benefits like overdraft interest free exemption, protection against delayed payments, collateral free bank loans, subsidy on patent registration and industrial promotion subsidy. 

“It is a law in India that all registered SMMEs should be paid for goods and services supplied within 15 days or else penalties in the form of interest are applied,” he said.  

He said when the SMMEs Development Act was enacted in India in 2006 and in 2015, SMMEs contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at 12.5 per cent while in 2025 increased to 30.1 per cent. 

However, Mr Ebutswe pointed out that in Botswana if the mandatory registration could be done, they would introduce incentives and benefits as well appreciating that at least 97 per cent of members of the community supported the initiative as it was indicated during their country wide consultations.

He said people were of the view that the initiative could create a desirable SMME ecosystem and eventually create more jobs to reduce the high rate of unemployment among the youth. 

Mr Ebutswe also challenged parents to encourage their children to embrace entrepreneurship as a driver of the country’s future saying it was the ultimate path to economic freedom. Children, he said should start enterprises now to optimise the networking opportunities. “Let’s encourage our children to be entrepreneurs than employees. Let us educate them about the importance of business ethics because with such, we can fight unemployment rates,” he added. ENDS