By Latonya Linton
KINGSTON, Jamaica, (JIS) – The ministry of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, in partnership with the Organization of American States (OAS), has launched a three-year Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (MSME) Digital Marketing Plan, to strengthen and empower MSMEs in Jamaica with digital marketing solutions.
This follows the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU), August 29 between the ministry and Kolau, a partner of Google, to collaborate towards the digitisation of 25,000 MSMEs in three years. The signing took place at the ministry’s St Lucia Avenue offices in New Kingston.
The goal of the digital marketing plan is to reduce the MSME failure rate by making them visible online and with e-commerce integrated at no cost to them.
In his address, minister of state in the ministry of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, Floyd Green, said the digital marketing plan will provide a space where MSMEs can create a dynamic and intelligent webpage as the centre of their web presence.
“One big plus of the relationship with google [is] it does help to provide location services that are directly aligned to google maps. The other plus is this will also provide our MSMEs with the ability to incorporate their provisions with a PayPal service. In this the age of e-commerce, one of the challenges our MSMEs have had is getting those services established,” Green said.
“Most importantly, it’s not a one-off interaction, it’s not that you just set up a web presence and that is the end of our engagement. We will have monthly YouTube live events, where we will help our MSMEs learn basic principles of digital marketing. We want them to become savvy in selling themselves and brands online,” he added.
Green noted that overall, the initiative will give MSMEs increased online presence and access to resources that they would not normally come across.
Founder and chief executive officer of Kolau, Danny Sanchez-Mola, said the MSME digitalisation plan, has been implemented with great success in the other countries in which it has been launched. Those countries include México, Chile, Paraguay and El Salvador.
Caption: Minister of State in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, Floyd Green (right), listens to Chief Executive Officer of Kolau, Danny Sanchez-Mola, at a signing ceremony held at the Ministry’s St Lucia Avenue offices in New Kingston, today (August 29).
“We believe that Jamaica will exceed, if not meet [the target], given the strong network of support that the Ministry has put in place for years,” Mola said.
Meanwhile, country representative of the OAS, Jeanelle Van Glaanenweygel, said the steady digitisation of MSMEs will improve the gross domestic product (GDP) rate contribution of the sector to the country.
“Digitisation will help business owners of small enterprises to keep better track of their online transactions, sell products online and interact better with their customers located in different parts of the world,” Glaanenweygel said.
The MSME Digitalisation Plan was introduced at the VI Inter-American Dialogue of High-Level MSME Authorities, organised by the Department of Economic Development of the OAS in El Salvador in April 2019.
