Young entrepreneurs around the countr will be optimistic as government initiative Umsobomvu Youth Fund is starting to show results.

Sue Blaine reports from JHB

THE government's youth entrepreneur promoter, the Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF), has started to encourage big business to give contracts to small ones, to help them gain points in participation in enterprise development .

This is a requirement for broad based black economic empowerment

Government has identified entrepreneurs as essential to SA's economic growth. Big business was often stumped about where to find small businesses offering the services it needed, said UYF CEO Malose Kekana in Johannesburg yesterday.

Fledgling businesses often did not have the benefit of social networks that gave their products a foot in the door, he said.

They also had to contend with nervousness among buyers about quality and they often did not have enough capital to take on opportunities to supply big business with their products.

Government created the UYF in January 2001 to promote entrepreneurs, job creation, skills development and skills transfer among South Africans, aged 18 to 35.

The UYF launched its database of small businesses to aid "matchmaking" between small and big businesses last March. After that success, the Business Opportunities Support Services (Boss) programme was being expanded.

It enables entrepre-neurs to enter their company profiles into the database and big business is able to request service, view small business offerings and correspond.

There are 400 small businesses on the database, which was launched with R10m in funds and has created business opportunities worth about R165m, Kekana said.

"If we can secure R1bn in opportunities over the next 30 months, we'll be making a difference," said UYF market linkages director Ashley du Plooy.

The UYF has bought a 26% stake in rating agency Decti, which will rate all of the businesses on the database.



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