A subcommittee of the Office for Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion (Osmep) will propose the establishment of a small and medium-sized enterprise university at a meeting of the agency board on Thursday.

With a working budget of Bt200 million, the panel has been studying the university proposal since visiting Japan late last year, said Osmep director-general Jhitraporn Techacharn.

An SME university would enhance the ability of Thai SMEs to obtain help from organisations for all aspects of their operations, including know-how and funding.

As an initial step, Osmep plans to seek cooperation from four universities that already offer curricula for training SME operators, rather than setting up a separate university modelled on those in Japan.

Japan has nine SME universities operated by the Organisation for Small and Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, Japan.

Thai universities that currently offer SME curricula include Assumption, Bangkok, Rangsit and Mahidol. Osmep will also seek cooperation from vocational schools, as well as Rajabhat and other local universities in designing a curriculum for SME training.

The proposal gained strength last week when Osmep officials visited Japan again, to study the operations of the Organisation for Small and Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation (SMRJ) in helping its SMEs grow into healthy businesses. The organisation works under Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and has the same responsibilities as Osmep: setting policies and working systems for the development of the country's SMEs.

The SMRJ's main missions are to promote entrepreneurship and growth in new businesses, strengthen management infrastructure, respond to changes in the operating environment and provide both land for industrial use and information on SME-related initiatives.

To offer Japanese SMEs easy access to assistance, it has set up nine national support centres to handle high-level management issues, 57 prefectural SME-support centres to help solve local SMEs' managerial problems and 263 regional SME-support centres offering familiar local assistance. Many of the centres cooperate with local government authorities and private-sector companies and seek SME support from chambers of commerce and trade associations.

After observing the work of the SMRJ, Jhitraporn said the Thai organisation needed to enhance SMEs' access to assistance by setting up more provincial centres and cooperating more closely with local authorities and institutes, such as vocational schools and universities.

Osmep already has 16 "incubation centres" to help new SMEs establish their businesses and plans to open another 10 this year. It also has six Venture Capital and Regional SME Mentorship Service Centres providing information and allocating loans to SMEs through joint investment and plans to establish as many as 38 of them, said Jhitraporn.

Osmep also plans to establish a "fund of funds" this year, so that SMEs will find it easier to access financial support.

Jhitraporn said Osmep would split off some of its budget, allocated by the government, to set up the fund. It will also join with public- and private-sector organisations, such as the Stock Exchange of Thailand, in order to help set up the separate funds and appoint managers to run them.

She said each fund should hold at least Bt200 million and that loan conditions would be set by agreement between Osmep and its partners.

The "fund of funds" will provide more financial alternatives for SMEs, easing the problems they have in finding loans to set up their businesses.

Osmep already has venture capital for making direct joint investments in SMEs. The government allocated Bt5 billion for this purpose in 2005. Of that, Bt1.5 billion has already been invested. A similar amount will be spent on SME loans this year.

The organisation's action plan for fiscal 2007-08, starting this October, includes funding an analysis of business dangers in each industry, so that SMEs can be given timely warnings; establishing three new SME indexes (the SME Competitiveness Index, an SME Sustainability Index and an SME Corporate Social Responsibility Index); and establishing its fourth fund, the Intellectual Property Fund.

Osmep also expects as many as 100,000 SMEs to register with the organisation. The current number is 20,000.

It conducts a regular index to measure SME confidence and has three funds: a branding fund, a consultancy fund and an international fund.

Nitida Asawanipont

The Nation

Tokyo