More than 1,000 delegates from the small and medium sized business sector worldwide will be meeting for a week at parallel conferences supported by InterTradeIreland in
The conferences are:
· The International Small Business Congress, being held for the first time ever in
- The Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship conference which attracts mainly academics involved in research and educating and training entrepreneurs.
The Conferences will take place in the Europa Hotel between the 4th and 7th November. Professor Ken O’Neill, Professor of Enterprise and Small Business Development at the University of Ulster, who is largely responsible for attracting the conferences to Northern Ireland, said: “This is the first major gathering of small business experts from across the world since the credit crunch began to take effect.”
As many SMEs face an uncertain future due to increasingly expensive borrowings and worsening cashflow problems, the conference will set out its ‘wish-list’ to the global financial institutions and governments.
These include:
• Banks should maintain current overdraft limits and bank borrowing arrangements for at least two years.
• There should be no interest rates on current borrowings.
• Any bank rate reduction should be passed on as quickly as possible.
• Bank charges should only move in line with inflation.
• Financial institutions should take a more sympathetic approach when considering repossessing homes or other personal assets secured against businesses.
• The Inland Revenue and Customs should respect instalment arrangements for paying VAT and tax bills.
• The UK should adopt a EU scheme to reduce VAT on labour intensive services to 7.5% from the current 17.5%.
Among those speaking at the conference sessions will be Padraic White, former managing director of the Industrial Development Authority in the Republic of Ireland; Graham Davis, Director - Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development, Invest NI; Professor Jim Bell, Professor of International Business Entrepreneurship, University of Ulster; Aidan Gough, Director - Strategy & Policy, InterTradeIreland.
The ISBC conference is being hosted by the University of Ulster. The main sponsors are Invest Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council, European Regional Development Fund, Enterprise Ireland, InterTradeIreland, Federation of Small Businesses, the Small Firms Association in the Republic of Ireland and the Genesis Initiative.
The International Small Business Congress meets annually, bringing together policy makers and practitioners. It attracts trade associations, governments, financial institutions, business support organisations and academic communities to exchange views about SME problems, policies and programmes for assisting the businesses.
Professor O’Neill said: “Policy makers, business owners and researchers often work in their own silos and have their own objectives and priorities. In order to have a proper business support system for small businesses, in an ideal world we would have researchers telling us what works and what doesn’t. Then policy makers would build on that evidence, implementing what works and adjusting that which doesn’t. Business owners would then work within those policies and inform the researchers of the consequences.
“By bringing together at these conferences policy makers, researchers and business owners from around the world we are creating a virtuous circle of the type needed.
“Policy is largely shaped by ill-informed politicians, by lobby groups, by bureaucrats and by civil servants rather than being based on scientific, unbiased research. It has reached the stage where people are seeing the need to ask questions about investment in this sector of business. There is little evidence that the 3,000 initiatives that exist in the UK are having the desired effect on the SME sector.
“Professor David Storey, one of the speakers at the conference, has examined 30 years of enterprise culture in the North East of England and has found that the relative position of the region in the UK has not changed dramatically in spite of the multitude of initiatives undertaken. The impact on the regional economy overall does not appear to be significant.
“Northern Ireland has been a laboratory for SME initiatives for the last 40 years and there is much to learn from what has been happening in this region.”
Professor O’Neill said that experience in the Republic reveals that intervention on a large scale is needed to impact directly on the economy.
“Shock initiatives such as the reduction of corporation tax to 12.5%, the creation of the Financial Services Centre in Dublin and the ‘search and seek’ efforts of the job creation agencies in the Republic which brought new inward investment created a climate which led to a more vibrant SME sector. The phenomenon of the Celtic Tiger is one of the experiences which will be examined at the conferences.”
For more information about the conferences visit http://www.isbe2008.org/