SME Ministers Launch Santiago Agenda on Entrepreneurship, Aimed at Promoting Growth and Job Creation

APEC Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Ministers have concluded their annual meeting with a call for government intervention to promote new ventures, increase support for innovation and strengthen human resources development.

These observations were made in the Santiago Agenda on Entrepreneurship that was endorsed at the 11th APEC Small and Medium Enterprise Ministers' Meeting in Santiago, Chile, on October 6-7.

The agenda seeks to share the experiences of APEC Member-Economies in creating a healthy business environment to foster growth and innovation for SMEs.

The Santiago Agenda calls for public sector intervention in the regional economy to ensure entrepreneurship promotion policies are developed to promote growth and job creation as well as to encourage SME innovation.

In addition to ways to promote new ventures, the Santiago Agenda also acknowledges the justification for public intervention for reasons of overcoming economic instability, disadvantages based on ethnicity, imbalances between rural and urban development, and gender inequity.
While priority accorded to individual objectives of the Santiago Agenda varies between economies, specific areas have been identified where public intervention and the development of stronger policies for entrepreneurship promotion may be particularly useful.

A series of recommendations and actions have been noted of each of these four areas:
- Developing Human Capital
- Access to Funding
- Removing Barriers to new Business Creation, and
- Innovation and Technology.

The Santiago Agenda on Entrepreneurship is now available on the APEC Secretariat Website.