Thirty-eight (38) participants comprising of BSP SME customers and BSP staff recently completed a two-week training on understanding the different aspects of businesses and how to grow them.
BSP Financial Group Limited’s SME Retail in partnership with Australian Business Volunteers (ABV) facilitated the two-week pilot training for “Your Enterprise Scheme” through its network of Skilled Business Professionals.
The training comprised of three (3) working models designed for the PNG SME market covering 17 different topics, primarily fundamental building blocks for SMEs in any market segment. These areas included business structure, compliance and the importance of keeping SME receipts records and growth by way of increasing revenue and profitability through simple fundamental approaches.
BSP Head of SME, Samuel Mulina said this Financial literacy training is part of BSP’s continued focus on supporting the SME Sector and is designed to augment the considerable success BSP has had in rolling out the Governments Credit Enhancement Scheme program (CESL). In 2022, BSP assisted 1,105 SMEs by lending K177m under the Scheme. Since the program’s inception, BSP has funded 1,484 SME loans to a total of K266m.
“Apart from the government funded Credit Enhancement Loan Scheme, BSP has been offering its own SME Lending Products since 2013. More than 151 businesses have been assisted with over K14m from BSP’s Smart Business Loan while 64 customers have been assisted with a total funding over K657,000 through BSP’s Micro Business Loan Products,” the Head of BSP SME said.
Mulina said, “We are not only looking at giving out loans but one of our obligation as the leading financial institution is to provide financial literacy trainings in our chosen markets and the SME segment is no exception. We had 32 BSP SME customers attend our coaching sessions with 6 BSP Lending officer and support staff in the segment.”
“Training commenced on November 22nd that saw one on one coaching sessions covering 17 business related topics on how SMEs can grow their businesses. The trainings were free of charge to our customers and we are looking forward to extend similar programs to SMEs from other parts of PNG,” Mulina added.
Certificates of Completion were presented to each SME and BSP staff who attended the Training on Tuesday 6th December 2022.