3:34:57 PM | 5/11/2022
The Agency of Enterprise Development (AED) of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), in collaboration with Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and the UN Development Program (UNDP), jointly launched the “COVID-19 Adaptation Program” for Social Impacted Businesses (SIBs) to increase their capacity and refine business models to address the challenges they are facing.
This package will support social impacted enterprises, startups, cooperatives, and small and medium enterprises that work with or work for vulnerable groups, in the agriculture and tourism industries.
It is expected that this package will aid businesses to create social impact in terms of identifying critical challenges due to COVID-19; designing new business models or developing new products/ services to adapt to COVID-19; and building and testing prototypes of products/services with the seed funds.
General Director of the Agency of Enterprise Development Le Manh Hung shared: “This support package will contribute to helping SIBs remove bottlenecks and difficulties through concrete actions.”
“Our baseline assessment showed that nearly 47% of interviewed Social Impacted Businesses had their revenue reduced due to COVID-19,” said UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam Caitlin Wiesen.
“We hope that the COVID-19 Adaptation Program will timely provide the necessary technical and financial support for the SIBs to realize their innovative ideas to solve their own challenges, thus benefiting vulnerable groups,” added Ms. Caitlin Wiesen.
In 2022, the Program will support 30 SIBs in the agriculture and tourism industries, focusing on the SIBs led by women and vulnerable groups. Each selected SIB will receive a 6-month coaching service and funding of VND100 million to identify, build and test the prototypes or new business models.
By Anh Mai, Vietnam Business Forum
Vietnamese
