‘Eliminate all obstacles in bid to support SMEs’ – Move to license projects

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KUWAIT CITY, Dec 8: Professor at the College of Administrative Sciences and former Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development Dr Adel Al-Waqyan said government’s support for small and medium enterprises must be done by eliminating all obstacles that stand in the way of establishing and licensing projects, reports Al-Anba daily.

A study by the World Bank confirmed that an entrepreneur needs 38 procedures for licensing the project, and these procedures take several months to finalize and may lead to erosion of the entrepreneur’s capital during the period due to the accumulation of rents.

In a special statement, he added that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is the only body that facilitates procedures for the entrepreneurs, but at the same time, there is a need for the rest of the authorities to follow the same pattern to make things easy for the owners of small and medium enterprises.

He believes that providing easy financial support to small projects, especially in times of crises, while retrieving support for easy and simple terms is essential and necessary for the continuity of projects, as it helps them absorb shock. He explained that a major obstacle faces entrepreneurs, which is high production cost of projects due to the high price of land.

He also said the market value of the land becomes greater than the returns on the project in the event of its implementation, which encourages the entrepreneurs to sell the land after obtaining it, instead of continuing with the project. Al-Waqyan called on government to encourage entrepreneurs in the current stage by allowing them to participate in the largest possible number of government projects currently existing or still under implementation, and to open the way for projects to enter the markets and contribute to the economic activity, stressing that this step has a good moral and material impact on the entrepreneurs and will greatly benefit the national economy.

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