Minister Sunil Bholah: “SMEDA is the Achilles heel of the SME sector”

The Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives, Sunil Bholah, hasn’t beaten about the bush in his speech at the National Assembly, this week. He has been very harsh against the ‘laisser-aller’ at SMEDA which created “a wretched condition which would never be able to provide the support and services expected by entrepreneurs.” A situation which justifies the replacement of SMEDA by SME Mauritius.

Minister Bholah has been quite forthright in saying that SMEDA is paradoxically the Achilles heel of the SME sector today, being mired in a deep state of apathy and paralysed by its own bulkiness. “This is mainly due to the result of the merger in 2005 of the then Small and Medium Industries Development Organisation - we all know about SMIDO – and the National Handicraft Promotion Agency (NHPA) into the Small Enterprises and Handicraft Development Authority (SEHDA) - not even SMEDA but SEHDA -which was later renamed as SMEDA. Prior to the merger, SMIDO had 45 employees and NHPA had 67,” he explained.

The Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives states that a reduction of 48 employees was recommended following the merger in 2005 but had not been acted upon. He deplores that relevant authorities failed to address severe institutional capacity weaknesses. “The cruellest of ironies is that despite its considerable size, SMEDA desperately lacks the necessary skills in-house to allow it to deliver according to its mandate. As a general rule, an organisation should be staffed in such a way that two third or more of its workforce are directly involved in the core functions of the organisation. Staff involved in supporting and administrative services should be at the minimum. SMEDA is a prominent exception to this rule”, he pointed out. 

A wretched condition

According to him, it is unacceptable that as frontline staff at SMEDA, there has been, till recently, only 12 business development officers and seven extension officers to service the SMEs across the island. Only 1% of SMEDA’s staff is on the field to service SMEs, which is complete nonsense. What about the remaining staff that adds up to 100? “Well, they perform office work and other cognate administrative duties. The conclusions of a report of the OPSG (Office of Public Sector Governance) in 2013 about SMEDA are scathing. As many as 35 posts were already no longer required and needed to be made redundant since then. Certain grades like general workers, office attendants and drivers are in oversupply”, he said. 

Minister Bholah has the impression that the apathy prevailing at SMEDA for years and years is beyond repair. Because since the beginning of 2015, his Ministry has been devoting a lot of time and resources trying to deal with several serious flaws that exacerbate the difficult situation at SMEDA, while at the same time energy should have been directed to SME community. “This was to no avail. For the past two and a half years, I was personally involved regarding this difficult issue of SMEDA by regularly holding meetings and workshops with the staff so as to nurture a new mindset and work culture, and to tell them what I really expect from them. I have been urging the staff to go on the field and move closer to entrepreneurs” he stated. 

In his opinion, an organisation in such a wretched condition would never be able to provide the support and services expected by entrepreneurs, as well as to effectively implement the economic agenda of the Government. “It is, in fact, understandable that SMEDA is often the subject of outcry on behalf of entrepreneurs, who unanimously believe that this institution is “complètement dépassée.”