In cooperation with private companies, US- ASEAN Business Council and UMFCCI organized the Conference on Digital Transformation of SMEs in order to boost competitiveness

SMEs Conference on Digital Transformation to boost competitiveness took place in Yangon, Monday. It was jointly organized by US-ASEAN Business Council and UMFCCI in cooperation with private companies.

This conference aimed to encourage the establishment of promotion of the Digital economy and to promote U.S. companies to ASEAN and to raise awareness in US about ASEAN as well.

It is focused on the digitalization of Myanmar SMEs and integration to E-commerce, a digital toolkit for market expansion, smart and effective marketing content making for products and services as well as digital banking and payment solutions for SMEs.

Senior Vice President, US-ASEAN Business Council, Michael W. Michalak said "As Myanmar continues to develop many of its laws and regulations some of are out of dates as you know they just recently passed new industry law and looking more at e-commerce law and think this nature . So, right now one of our major goes is to work with the government to make sure that as they go ahead the new laws and regulations that they have impact for the private sector to taken to account as they go whether business of doing to the new law. We find that in the future how a country treat the digital economy is going to be very important factor in the company decision of work to invest… "

More than 200 wide ranges of SMEs entrepreneurs joined this conference. This conference is great initiative and can share the experience how to global business and how to reach out to many people in Myanmar, one of the panelist pointed out. 

Chief Executive Officer, MyJobs.com.mm, Hans Van Beek said “We can share how we are doing this in Myanmar and I would say very important of aspect of this mindset. You never know before what will work and part of the digital toolkit is not just a tool the recourse is how you work with them and how you test and try and get experience and learn things from it. And then trust and test try new things. One of the challenges is to educate to market. A lot of things in Myanmar very new for most people so the business is large and small have to educate the market...”

The adoption of Digital Development Economy is very important for SMEs and Digital Transformation is also crucial for the SMEs development.

Member, Digital Economy Development Committee (DEDC), Dr. Tun Thura Thet said “We need to apply and invest for technology to outreach for digital marketing. We need to operate work for the digital transformation. The government encourages for SMEs development but we need to time bound and specific ambition to it. It is very important to balance in SMEs in access to finance, technology, qualified human resource, market and information so as to do all round development.”

More than 90 percent of the businesses are SMEs in Myanmar and it also creates job opportunity but SMEs contribution in country’s GDP is still less and just only 30 to 40 % GDP.

(Myanmar International TV Channel: https://www.myanmaritv.com/news/smes-development-conference-digital-transformation-smes )

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