Assuming you are an everyday consumer, you’ve probably heard tons of people encouraging you to “buy local”! And while the obvious reason for this would be to keep spending money circulating within an economy, it also calls for supporting smaller businesses that aren’t multinational.
More than half of the world’s businesses are classified as micro, small, or medium enterprises (MSMEs). As such, the role they play in stabilizing and developing economies is significant and should be given due credit. The following are the three best reasons why you should seek out MSMEs’ products and services before all else.
1. MSMEs Create Jobs
The World Bank has determined that MSMEs cover 50% of the world’s employment. Job creation is key to growing economies and is essential as well to any business’ growth. Jobs help refine and produce newer talents, roles, and responsibilities in industries across the board.
As society – and subsequently, technology – progresses over time, job creation is vital in sustaining employment rates. MSMEs would thus require maximum support to promote more job growth.
2. The Solution for Struggling Economies
When COVID-19 spread like wildfire across the globe in 2020, countless industries went under and hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and other means of income. The hardest hit would probably have been multinational corporations, as travel, production & manufacturing, and transportation shut down.
MSMEs fill in this gap by being small enough to perform with agility, adapting to new situations across the entire organization more easily than if the company were ten times its size. Especially considering that around 90% of businesses in total are MSMEs, it makes sense that these businesses serve as the backbone to any and all economies.
3. MSMEs are Pioneers
Because MSMEs often arise from addressing particular and sometimes niche problems, they are also often pioneers in developing solutions previously underdeveloped, or even nonexistent. MSMEs understand the needs of their locale much more in-depth than any other larger business could, and so have a greater ability to transform innovative ideas into real, practical solutions.
As such, MSMEs do not only compel innovation, they accelerate it.
In conclusion, supporting MSMEs also means supporting society as a whole. They propel development, innovation, sustainable goals, income generation, and various other capitalization factors. These are why government bodies and other organizations focus strongly on their funding and development.
So next time you feel like “buying local”, now you know you’re benefitting yourself, too!
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