Thank you to all of you who made this event a raging success.  100 delegates gathered and shared their experiences of access to finance and running small businesses in general.  Please look through the forum pictures page to get a \\\”picture\\\” of what happened on the day.

Note that this was by no means the last SME finance forum. The SME finance forum committee is in the process of lobbying for funding  for future forums. Keep an eye out for announcements!!

If you have any suggestions and would like to become more involved in the process please get in contact with us. We welcome your participation.

We are very excited to announce that Swisscontact will host one more SME finance forum!!!

THe next SME finance forum will be on the 23rd September 2009. SO BOOK THE DAY NOW!!!

We now call ALL attendees of the May 2009 forum to assist us in ensuring the participation and presence of ALL roleplayers in the industry. CALL THEM, EMAIL THEM, EMAIL ME THEIR NUMBERS, do all you can to make sure we have the buy in from all parties.

if you have an idea or contact details you want us to add to the current database, email me and i will ensure they are invited.

regards

rozandi (swisscontact)

PS. if you want to make a comment on this post…just click the link on top right of this post that says\”1 comment\” and you can chat away.

Minutes of the Finance forum commitee meeting

held on

Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2009

Time: 10:00 – 12:00

Venue: Swisscontact offices, foreshore, Cape Town

The third finance forum steering committee was held this morning and yielded constructive objectives and activities to be completed before the next meeting on Thursday 13^th August 2009. The results of the meeting are as follows:

1. The committee members will send Rozandi all contact details of key stakeholders to be invited for next forum, this will include clients-smes, government support agencies, financial institutions-formal and informal (due date: 29^th July 09)

2. Send contact details of all participants who want to be part of the committee to Rozandi-she will send a formal invitation to members for the next meeting

3. Rozandi will send log on details for swisscontact database to the team in order to update the financial institution information(task team 1).- Jayant Johaar is responsible for overseeing this objective met. The process will be broken into three phases :

· Research (due date 13 August 2009)

· analyses and recommendations (13^th August 2009 during the meeting)

· presentation- case studies (23^rd September 2009- next finance forum)

4. Rozandi takes responsibility for the case study task team- a total of 10 case studies will be presented at next meeting- Rozandi to complete 4, Solly to complete 4 and Jayant to complete 2. The process will be broken into three phases :

· Research (due date 13 August 2009)

· analyses and recommendations (13^th August 2009 during the meeting)

· presentation- case studies (23^rd September 2009- next finance forum)

5. Marketing specialist to start lobbying for funding for 2010 finance forum- marieToth will take responsibility for this objective

6. Budget for the forum to be created by Solly for the purpose of Lobbying

7. Presentation and forum task team to be established at the next committee meeting

8. The case studies will possibly govern the next forum, the objective before the next forum is for all stakeholders to be informed of progress and successes of committee and task team efforts

9. Presentation and forum task team(plan the integration of all presentations of the next forum)

The idea is to showcase positive results how small businesses succeeded with alternative financial resources and/or consolidation of their business processes: i.e. productivity, systems, training, management skills etc.

Next forum committee meeting is the 13^th august 10am.

Agenda for 13^th August 2009 steering committee meeting

1. Analyse research as presented by task teams- workshop recommendations

2. Define SMEs according to financial data presented by Jayant, Clarify target audience for the next forum (23^rd September 09)and what we mean when we say small businesses (financial institutions perspective, government perspective, bdsps perspective)

3. Set meetings with the identified stakeholders for buy in next forum.

4. Set Presentation and forum task teams tasks

5. Provide solly with historical forum budget and discuss budget