Msukaligwa Local Municipality 2008/09 - Co-operative Governance ...

are. Existing businesses get little attention and often see “LED” as a local government issue or perhaps a social responsibility matter anyway. It becomesdifficult to maintain enthusiasm and to prevented from becoming marginalized.A welcome number of opportunities have been created through infrastructure development and service provision but it is unusual to find clear links betweenthese projects and LED initiatives and not many survive after the project ends.Encouraging local business growthMost local economic growth is generated by small- and medium sized businesses that are already established in the community. Encouraging localbusiness growth involves providing advice, support and resources to enable these existing local businesses to grow. These strategies are sometimescalled business retention and expansion strategies. The range of initiatives to support local businesses is vast some can be expensive, but others are notPrograms and projects include:Business retention visits and surveys.Visits to and surveys of existing firms can help identify problems, determine how the business is performing, from where it sources its inputs, whether it isexpanding, etc. These visits can be used to encourage local businesses to source more inputs locally, identify and finance training and skills needs, andcontribute to LED strategy development. An important role at these visits is to identify factors that might forestall a business leaving the area. Thisproposed action would also contribute towards improving communication channels between the municipality and business in general.Technical assistance to business.This can include broad-based management and marketing programs, quality and environmental standards training and advice, through to morespecialized export training or research and development support the focus here should be on providing accredited, demand-led, technical assistance,paid for on a fee-for-service basis, if possible. Often these services are provided through one-stop business service centres.Financial advice and assistance.One of the hardest issues for businesses is to access capital. An appropriate financial support program will be able to give advice and training onfinancial planning, access to capital and credit, etc. In some cases it may be possible to establish small grant or loan programs to encourage, forexample, investment in modem technology. Great care should be taken with these to ensure fairness; these schemes should always be transparent inmany instances the local authority has access to specialist knowledge that may be required by SME’s and PDI’s. The local authority is also in a positionto mobilize present established enterprise to assist SMME’s where desirable.Public procurement policies and “buy local” campaigns.These are local, business friendly policies where the local government, public sector organizations and larger local businesses make their contracts moreaccessible to local companies. This has to be done within fair-practice laws. Initiatives could include adjusting the size of contracts so that smallercompanies may bid, encouraging and accepting bids from groups of local companies, holding procurement events for local businesses, publishing localbusiness competency directories and so on.Bureaucracy reduction programs.Msukaligwa Municipality: Integrated Development Plan 2007/2012 246