It’s everybody’s dream! Creating an economy is like leading a crowd to do what you intended them to do. Take a band: Black Eyed Peas; to a place: Chicago and its skylines; for a good cause: Oprah; and a group of like minded citizens; Chicagoans. See how it all happened.

What a great energizer! But, where is the leader here? How was the orchestration process? Can it be repeated? What are the lessons for the leaders of today? How about management?

Yesterday May 2 at 5:30 pm, the management and staff of EDC initiated a Basi essentially as a gesture of thanks for a wonderful year that was and for a hope for a prosperous Lao New Year. This is an annual ritual that EDC conducts to insure prosperity and luck for the incoming year. The four managing partners and the entire staff were present together with some invited guests, the Mo Phone and the five monks.

The prayers and wishes for a prosperous New Year was sanctified by the Monk’s incantations in the background. It was a solemn and pious ceremony. The Monk’s blessed the entire EDC premises with the holy water to appease and good spirits and drive away the evil ones. Gifts to the spirits were offered together with special prayers and wishes.  Everyone had a change to wish everyone good fortunes in wealth, health, romance, peace, and happiness and shared the virtuous strings that each tied on their right wrists. It was a sublime  experience. One of the guests remarked that this is a fast track to prosperity.

The solemn event was followed by a sumptuous dinner where everyone had a chance to share the humble food and sweets prepared for the event. Everyone looks forward to a great year ahead of all.

EDC has been commissioned by the SME Promotion and Development Office (SMEPDO) and the Lao-German Human Resource Development in Market Economy Programme (HRD-ME) to draft the first ever SME Annual Report (White Paper) in Lao PDR. The paper follows the issuance of the Prime Minister’s Decree No. 43/PM dated 20 April 2004, the SME Promotion and Development Committee (SMEPDC) and its secretariat, as well as the SMEPDO. These institutions have been mandated to to coordinate implementation of the policies of the government on SME promotion and development.

The paper will use the White Papers in Thailand and Japan as guides, the draft report assembled all the available statistics and survey data in Laos today. It provided an overview of the of the situation and development trends of the SMEs during the year. Both EDC and SMEPDO hope that the paper will provide decision makers and the general public with vital information that can broaden the understanding of the role of SMEs in the national economy, specially in terms of employment, income generation and poverty alleviation. The report uses existing surveys and studies as main sources. It complemented these secondary sources with actual surveys and interviews of the existing and future SME- and private sector promotion agncues activities of several donor agencies. Among others, it featured interviews with GTZ, EU, ADB, IFC, ILO and the World Bank-International Finance Company.

The EDC’s consultant team consisted of Thiphaphone, Dr. Vivath and Phoukong are working on the SME Annual Report 2008. EDC has officially submitted the draft of the white paper to SMEPDO last month.

In a recent meeting, the digital media has started to itemize its web-based and internet engineering services for the SMEs and institutional clients. Visay reported to the EDC partners that EDC Media Service will facilitate the dissemination of technical information, case studies, research results, statistics, and other important EDC announcements and events. As planned, the site will be hosted by a UK based server and will employ the latest web 2.0 technologies (e.g., WordPress, Moodle, and Joomla) in spinning highly interactive and content driven sites. Digital media will team up with K+e Ventures, Asia in the Philippines to insure continuous flow of content and media elements.

The web services will include: Website set-up and hosting (up to 12 months at a time), installation (e.g.1. Word Press setup, theme selection and installation, banner design, logo and customization, first four articles with content management training, widgets as well as plugin consultation and installation). EDC is now working on Creative Common license, Adsense and merchant account for the installation of e-Commerce plugins.

One of the most important functions of the unit is capacity building. For every web installation, EDC hopes to train and develop young IT paraprofessionals who will work within the SME client or NGOs, development projects and government installations in both rural and urban internet serviced areas. EDC will develop two types of IT paraprofessionals: web administrators and web content makers. With this unit, EDC hopes to expand the possibilities for the Lao private sector to participate in the expanding internet opportunities worldwide.

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The world is in trouble that was triggered by the 2008 financial crisis. As a Lao SME entrepreneurs, What can you possibly do in these times of slowing sales, mounting collectibles, increasing workers restlessness and more and more uncertainties among the shareholders and equity investors. Fortunately, Laos has not been hit as hard as its neghbours…but it will soon be! Remember that our neighbours buy Laos products. As soon as they start feeling the tsunami their imports will likewise decline. Do we wait till this happens?

In line with the Government and the private sectors’ concern for the negative impacts of the financial crisis among SMEs, EDC asked its new Digital Media unit for ideas on what the SMEs can do to weather the Read the rest of this entry »