Bohol opens 4th KMME 

With 25 MSME joining 

TAGBILARAN CITY, May 10 (PIA)—For the next 11 weekly sessions, 25 of Bohol’s most promising micro, small and medium entrepreneurs learn and unlearn industry secrets and loopholes, as the 4th batch of the Kapatid Mentor Micro-Entrepreneur (KMME) Program rolls off at the Panda Tea Garden and Suites, May 10, 2019 and onwards. 

Offered free by the government through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Go Negosyo Center, Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE) and the Bohol Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the KMME in Bohol has already graduated 81 mentees who successfully completed the 11 mentorship sessions in the past three batches. 

Project KMME is part of project KAPATID, an initiative of the DTI and the PCE to help the country’s micro and small enterprises (MSEs) through three key components: the Mentor ME (micro entrepreneurs) program, a coaching and mentoring approach where large corporations teach MSEs on different aspects of business operations, the Adopt-an-SSF (Shared Service Facility) program, which aims to help micro entrepreneurs by providing them access to SSFs in their community and the Inclusive Business (IB) model where MSEs are linked into large companies’ value chains. 

For the KMME program, it aims to help micro and small entrepreneurs scale up their enterprises and in turn, spur economic activity and generate employment opportunities and mainstream small entrepreneurs ready for business expansion. 

KMME features modules that subject the mentees to various business concepts in the hope of mentoring them to develop the business acumen needed in scaling up and sustaining their enterprises through discussions on the mindset and values of a successful entrepreneur. 

To their businesses: KMME puts up free mentoring modules covering the basic functional areas of an enterprise like product development, marketing, operations management, accounting, taxation, finance, obligations and contracts from leading industry businessmen as picked by the local chamber of commerce and industry. 

On sustaining the enterprise are four modules each designed to walk the entrepreneurs to ascertain sustainability and growth: such include human resource management, supply and value chains, succession planning and finally on the tricky business plan development which ends with a presentation and critiquing. 

Believed to be one of the key proactive government initiatives to spur local economies, KMME helps sustain the broad-based economic growth that assures more inclusive growth. 

In fact, according to DTI 7 Regional Director Asteria Caberte, from the three batches, some entrepreneur graduates have gone outside and ventured into the export market. 

Caberte, who personally came to officiate the opening of the fourth batch of KMME here, said a graduate of KMME Batch 1, Tubigon Loomweavers MPC is now making P1.7 million in monthly sales and has caused more jobs for the local community. 

But not all should be going to the export market, she said. 

Instead, there is so much promise in filling up the tourism value-chain, the trade regional director who started Bohol’s longest running trade fair and products exposition in the late 1980’s. 

She cites the food development program value chains that has a lot of areas where local entrepreneurs can fill. 

On this, the DTI, along with other government agencies are assisting entrepreneurs in food safety training to earn their food safety license to operate as well as the certificates of product registrations. 

Apart from Tubigon Loomweavers, Caberte also talked about two more Boholano entrepreneurs who are steaming hot with their coffee businesses: Buenaventurada Farms and PP Coffee. 

She also talked about a wearables company: Virtucio Designs, that is now making ripples in the fashion and novelty items niche. 

This year, batch 4 participants came from priority industries, which include processed food, cacao, coffee, tourism services sector, creatives, manufacturing, wearables and home style as well as furniture, according to 25-year-old Go Negosyo Center Bohol business counselor Keith Anthony Calumba. 

DTI Bohol Provincial Director Maria Soledad Balistoy said for every batch of KMME, the government spends for its conduct along with PCE, BCCI and these mentoring sessions are all free. 

While these sessions are free, a regular business mentoring class in the formal institutions can cost an entrepreneur whooping amount figuring out in tens of thousands of pesos. 

In the KMME graduates roll are the highly popular Estrella Bakery, Tuko Café, Dukle Miñoza’s Buenaventurada Farms, Calape Kinatlo-an, Osang’s Broas, Miñoza Delicacies, and a whole bunch of furniture shops now actively joining regional and national trade fairs and expositions. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol) 

EXPORT MARKET NOT FOR ALL. DTI-7 Regional Director Asteria Caberte that while there are now over three Boholano MSME graduates of the Kapatid Mentor Micro Entrepreneur Program who are already in the export market, the market is not for everyone. She added, a focus on the gaps in the local tourism value chain can be more ideal for the 81 mentees who completed the first three KMMP batches. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)