The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organisation has commissioned the Massey University Centre for Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) Research to evaluate the usefulness of its Small Business Working Group.
Professor David Deakins, Director of the Centre based in the University’s School of Management in Wellington hopes to complete the assessment by December.
He would also submit his recommendations to strengthen practices and protocols to enable the Working Group to align more closely with the strategic priorities of APEC.
He said it was an important assignment, since SMEs played an important role in the member countries of APEC.
APEC comprises 21 countries in the Pacific Rim, including Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and the US.
Professor Deakins said SMEs were important to economic development of every country, big or small, rich or poor.
“The work that APEC does to support the sector helps to foster growth and development, build management capabilities and strengthen skills needed to access international markets in all its member countries, including New Zealand,” he said.
He said owners of SMES were changing products and services and, where necessary, working longer hours to combat the effects of the recession.
The Centre’s recent Annual Survey called, ‘BusinessSMEeasure,’ aimed to determine how companies had adapted to the recession and how it had affected performance.
The Survey accounted for 1400 businesses, 53% of which had introduced new or improved products and services to survive the global downturn.
“About 44% of the respondents said they were making increased sales efforts and 48% of owners reported working longer hours. Yet, just over a quarter of the businesses said they had felt no negative impact,” the Survey said.
In 2008, a third of the business had reported the first effects of the recession and, by October last year, 69% of SMEs had similar experience. However, 26% said they had not yet felt the effects of the recession.
“For most, but not all, sales are declining and the pace of the decline is picking up. About 50% of the respondents said sales in second quarter in 2009 were worse than first quarter sales the previous year. However, one in five businesses bucked the trend and reported sales increases,” the Survey said.
Professor Deakins described the findings as ‘significant,’ as they showed remarkable resourcefulness of SMEs in New Zealand.
“Strategies that businesses are introducing to combat the effects of the recession are contributing to their resilience,” he said.
