The Solomon Islands Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI) in partnership with Pacific Trade Invest New Zealand (PTI NZ) for a third successive year delivered a ‘Business Capability and Investment’ workshop in Honiara on Thursday 19th September 2019.
The free one-day ‘Business Capability and Investment’ workshop brought together thirty (30) participants ranging from local export ready businesses both SICCI members and non-members and Government representatives
The workshop was facilitated by PTI NZ Development Manager, Mr Ian Furlong and Mr Emmanuel Valdez, Acting Trade Commissioner of PTI NZ.
This is part of PTI NZ’s Pacific Path to Market business capability building programme aimed at assisting businesses to be successful and in the future be able to enter the export market.
It is the first step in a seven (7) staged programme that can provide selected businesses the opportunity to participate in a Trade Mission to New Zealand in 2020 to look at export opportunities for themselves.
The workshop gave participants a snapshot of the New Zealand market environment, current trading patterns and balance of trade, understanding your customer and how that can benefit your business, developing your company story and value proposition as well as understanding product costing, pricing and profitability.
During the afternoon session, participants were able to go through an overview of the investment environment, global investment climate, factors influencing investment decisions, ease of doing business snapshot, input cost situation, foreign direct investment trend, opportunities for investment, where to invest, how to make an investment decision and objectives of investors and finance providers.
These are critical for business development and growth.
SICCI through its Export Industry Development Department values this relationship with PTI NZ for the past three years seeing it as one way of partnering with other organizations and institutions in delivering knowledge and required skills to Solomon Islands businesses.
SICCI’s Export Industry Development Officer (EIDO), Mr John Paul Alasia said as a result of this partnership with PTI NZ, a total of fifteen (15) export ready Solomon Islands businesses have been able to travel to New Zealand since 2017 to test-market their products at the annual PTI NZ Trade Show organized for businesses from around the Pacific.
Mr Alasia says hosting such a workshop falls in line with SICCI’s goal through its EIDO Department on market-access related activities that will assist in export industry growth in Solomon Islands.
Mr Ian Furlong, Development Manager at PTI NZ said the ‘Business Capability and Investment’ workshop was designed for small businesses to be able to build their capabilities internally, and to export their products at some point going into the future.
“We want to help local businesses realize their dreams of exporting outside of Solomon Islands which is good for them and good for the country’s economy.
“The success of this programme would not have been possible without our partners the Solomon Islands Chamber of Commerce, SICCI.
“This partnership has made this such a success and I’m confident it will continue going into the future and I thank SICCI for being our active partners,” Mr Furlong said.
Meanwhile, SICCI acknowledges the valuable partnership it has with Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Labour and Immigration (MCILI) and the Pacific Horticulture Agriculture Market Access (PHAMA Plus) for their support in sending local businesses to the annual PTI NZ trade show in New Zealand for the past two years.
-SICCI Media
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