Go Negosyo and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) are poised to strengthen their collaboration to upscale the country’s MSMEs. DTI Secretary Alfredo Pascual and Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion led the meeting to align programs and initiatives in MSME development. 

 The programs and initiatives include the KMME (Kapatid Mentor MicroEntrepreneurs), OTOP (One Town One Product) and other capability programs, as well as Go Negosyo’s popular free entrepreneurship mentoring roadshow 3M on Wheels and its collaborative program with First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos’s LAB For All initiative. 

 “Go Negosyo is here to support the DTI in whatever way it can,” said Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion. “Our aim has always been to give our MSMEs access to the three M’s needed by any entrepreneur to succeed: money, markets and mentoring,” he said. For his part, Sec. Pascual said that the DTI will continue to collaborate with Go Negosyo and that it can count on their support, especially as the non-profit prepares to expand its programs to the provinces.

 Joining the meeting with Pascual and Concepcion were DTI Undersecretary Cris Roque, DTI Usec and Chief of Staff Ana Carolina Sanchez, BSMED Director Emma Asusano, BSMED STIDS Michelle Maramag, Go Negosyo Senior Adviser Engr. Merly Cruz, and Go Negosyo Executive Director Mina Akram.

 During the meeting, specific milestones of the KMME program were discussed, focusing specifically on how it continues to enable MSMEs in the country. KMME is the longest-running program of Go Negosyo with the DTI. It was initiated in 2016 as an entrepreneurship mentoring program that seeks to facilitate the growth and development of small businesses in the Philippines by enhancing their business management competencies through coaching and mentoring. KMME now has almost 13,000 MSMEs that have completed the program, and almost a thousand certified mentors among its ranks.

 A paper by the AIM Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Effectiveness found that KMME was generally effective in helping graduates grow their businesses and their business management skills, highlighting “improvements in employment, net profit, and market share.” The study also found that program participants became resourceful, helping them overcome limitations when seeking to innovate and expand. 

 KMME also provided the blueprint for the ASEAN Mentorship for Entrepreneurs (AMEN) Program, which is currently being implemented across all ASEAN member-states using KMME modules that have been translated into the languages of the ASEAN countries.

 Given the success of the KMME, DTI said it will try, and capitalize on its success and the established curriculum of the program for its other learning initiatives. It is also planning to track the progress of MSMEs and see how many have grown from micro to small, small to medium, and so forth. Moreover, the DTI said it is now building and updating its database to update MSME data in the Philippines.