The Responsible Business Fund provides financial support to 504 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in seven sectors in order to develop SMEs in Myanmar

To help develop Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Myanmar, the Responsible Business Fund is providing financial assistance to 504 SMEs in seven sectors.
The fund has been providing monetary assistance, particularly to innovation-related projects in seven sectors, for the development of the practice of doing business in a responsible manner. Additionally, the RBF is aiming to encourage tough competition in conducting business.
The seven sectors receiving assistance are concerned with energy wastage, water resource utilization, disposal and recycling of waste, healthcare and security, food safety, supervision and monitoring technologies, and empirical and theoretical technologies.
The RBF is funding 50-80 per cent of the total cost of the projects in the seven sectors, said U Thar Lin Htet, Grant Manager, RBF.
“The RBF has provided 65 per cent funding to the Kaung Myat lathing and iron melting factory, which belongs to the energy wastage sector. There are 504 SME entrepreneurs across the country we have been providing assistance to from the seven sectors. Among them, 88 SMEs are based in Mandalay region. Entrepreneurs who wish to receive support from RBF need to submit quarterly reports to us on the implementation of the projects concerned.
Then, after scrutinizing the reports, the RBF chooses SME entrepreneurs to support. Those who want to know about RBF can look up our website (www.rbfmyanmar.coma) and Facebook page (www.facebook.com/FCGRBF/),” he added.
“We submitted the application for our project in the energy wastage sector in October, 2018. We have received K50 million (65 per cent of the total cost of the project) in monetary support from the RBF. We only need to focus on developing our business. We have to submit reports on the progress of work every three months. But, we don’t need to give back anything in return,” said U Hla Moe Than, the owner of the Kaung Myat lathing and iron melting factory. The Ministry of Planning and Finance and the Denmark Embassy signed an agreement on 1 December, 2016 to support SMEs in Myanmar.—Than Zaw Min (IPRD) (Translated by Hay Mar)

(Global New Light of Myanmar: http://www.globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/rbf-supporting-development-of-over-500-smes/ )

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