DTI continues to promote entrepreneurship

The DTI provides assistance to Filipinos to make setting-up and managing businesses easier. (Photo: DTI Eastern Visayas/Facebook)

MANILA — The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said it will continue to promote entrepreneurship among Filipinos through education and assistance.

Three out of its “7Ms” to create smarter and more successful entrepreneurs, are related to education and helping Filipinos kick off their own livelihood. These include mindset change, mastery, and mentoring.

Data released by the agency to Philippine News Agency (PNA) showed that from July 2016 to June 2018, there were 6,963 runs of the Small and Medium Enterprises Roving Academy (SMERA) nationwide as part of its mindset change initiative.

Some 266,237 individuals attended the SMERA, where entrepreneurial mindset was infused to the participants.

DTI also partners with the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship or Go Negosyo, where Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez was its former executive director, for the Kapatid MentorME Program as part of its mentoring initiative.

Under the program, the government partners with large firms to provide mentorship to micro entrepreneurs for them to grow their businesses.

As of end-June 2018, the program has 476 mentors and benefitted some 5,799 individuals, who participated in the Mentor ME Program. Of the said participants, 2,633 graduated from the program.

The DTI also provides assistance to Filipinos to make setting-up and managing businesses easier.

To master the know-how and how-tos of entrepreneurship, some 892 Negosyo Centers were established nationwide.

About 90 percent of 143 cities and 52 percent of 1,373 municipalities already have Negosyo Centers.

The Negosyo Centers nationwide have so far assisted 1.7 million clients.

Apart from mindset change, mentoring, and mastery, the 7Ms initiative of DTI includes money, machine, market access, and models of business which capacitate Filipinos to succeed in their businesses.