Promoting investment

	Sylvia Masebo, Minister of Local Government and Housing of Zambia and outgoing Chairperson of the Commonwealth Consultative Group on Human Settlements, delivers a statement on behalf of the CCGHS to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in April 2005

Private capital investment flows tend to be concentrated towards a few countries, thereby marginalising two important Commonwealth constituencies – Sub-Saharan Africa and small states. The Secretariat therefore facilitates member countries’ access to private capital to encourage adequate investment to enable them to integrate and share the benefits of globalisation.

The Commonwealth Private Investment Initiative (CPII), launched in 1995, has mobilised over US$300 million in capital from Commonwealth investment agencies, development finance institutions and the private sector. Four regional funds were established under the initiative: the Commonwealth Africa Investment Fund (Comafin), South Asia Regional Fund (Sarf), Kula Fund for the Pacific and the Tiona Fund, later renamed the Caribbean Investment Fund. All four have completed their investment programmes and are now divesting at a premium for their shareholders. In light of the commercial success of the first generation CPII funds, the Secretariat is now in the process of rolling out a second generation of funds.

Pan-Commonwealth Africa Partners closed in November 2004 with capital of $103 million, including major private investor interest. It is focusing on pan-African businesses and multi-country enterprises. Sarf 2 has raised $135 million and is focusing on regional integration projects. Kula 2 aims to raise $20 million and focus on the smaller islands of the Pacific.

Support for small and medium-sized enterprises

The potential contribution of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to economic growth and equitable development is great. However, progress is often hampered by a lack of competitiveness arising from low productivity, inadequate managerial skills, difficulties in exploiting technology, lack of access to markets and inappropriate policies. The Secretariat has focused on assisting the formulation of appropriate policies and strategies, upgrading the human and institutional capabilities of SME operators and business service providers, and improving SMEs’ access to ICTs and international markets. Partnerships forged with global, regional and national partners have added value to this assistance.

A Caribbean regional assistance programme to develop policies and strategies conducive to SME development and utilisation of ICTs to gain competitive advantage was initiated in February 2005. Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia have received assistance under the programme. In Bangladesh and Jamaica, SMEs in the ICT sector have benefited from strategy development and training assistance enabling them to provide better services and gain access to new markets.

Assistance to improve skills and capabilities has focused on both human and institutional capacity-building. In The Gambia and Tanzania, women entrepreneurs received training in agro-processing of fruits and vegetables and assistance to start their own businesses. The Secretariat’s Start and Improve Your Fisheries Business Training Programme, implemented in Papua New Guinea in 2002, has been extended to other Pacific island countries, starting with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in June 2005.

	A market in The Gambia, where the CFTC has provided training in agro-processing for women entrepreneurs

By mid-2005, work was under way in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Seychelles, Swaziland and Uganda to compile an inventory of locally available resources that can be used in building construction, and to train SMEs to produce affordable building materials to meet the increased demand for new houses. Such direct assistance to SMEs has been complemented by networking and training targeting senior officials in SME development institutions.

The Commonwealth-India Small Business Competitiveness Development Programme is aimed at equipping senior policy-makers with skills and tools needed to develop competitive small business policies and strategies. A partnership between the Secretariat and the Government of India, it has nurtured ‘South-South’ co-operation between Indian SME development institutions and those in Sri Lanka and the Caribbean.

A training workshop on enterprise competitiveness and SME development is organised twice yearly in collaboration with the Government of Singapore.
Assistance to enable SMEs to gain access to lucrative international markets has been provided to The Gambia to develop an operational plan for the establishment of a national standards bureau. Nigeria received assistance to bring domestic sanitary and phytosanitary standards and technical regulations in line with international norms.

Much effort has gone into promoting policies and initiatives to nurture indigenous SMEs in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Within the framework of its ‘Lowering the Threshold’ initiative, the Secretariat organised meetings in the three regions, bringing together the respective regional development banks, domestic commercial banks and multilateral development partners. The consensus was that there is an urgent need to improve SMEs’ access to debt finance at market-related prices.
Other initiatives included assistance to Maldives and Sierra Leone, to help institute regulatory arrangements for the establishment of stock markets and the development of capital markets. The Secretariat facilitated the creation of collective savings and investment schemes in Uganda, and carried out a diagnostic review of regulatory and institutional barriers to private sector investment in Ghana. It also assisted the SADC Secretariat in developing a regional competition policy framework, and The Gambia in the preparation of national competition policy and law.

The Secretariat is working to mainstream gender into its own programmes such as the Commonwealth-India Small Business Competitiveness Development Programme and Link-IT. It also works closely with the Commonwealth Business Women’s Network, which it established to empower women’s businesses to benefit from economic opportunities.