THE Department of Trade and Industry will bring its Negosyo Serbisyo sa Barangay (NSB) program to 20 more local government units (LGUs) in Cebu within the year.
DTI Provincial Director Esperanza Melgar said their target is to conduct the NSB in at least 59 barangays across the province.
“That is 20 percent of the total number of barangays in Cebu under the fourth and fifth class,” the official told SunStar Cebu.
The NSB program targets fourth, fifth and sixth class municipalities across the country in pushing an entrepreneurial culture at the barangay level, Melgar said.
The program was piloted in Moalboal, a town southwest of Cebu City, on Aug. 3. 2019, which initially involved three barangays.
“We will be conducting the NSB in 20 other LGUs in Cebu involving 59 barangays within the next three months,” the DTI official said.
The program aims to bring business development in the grassroots level. It sets sights on further developing the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector which accounts for about 99 percent of registered businesses in the country.
It also targets to capacitate more entrepreneurs to scale up their operations.
Through this initiative, DTI field offices will capacitate barangay development councils to be able to assist clients in the locality in availing themselves of the services provided by the DTI.
The program intends to develop 200,000 new enterprises expected to provide more than 500,000 new jobs by 2022 under the DTI’s MSME Development Plan 2017 to 2022. It also expands and complements the 1,701 Negosyo Centers as of June 2019 across the country.
Aside from trainings and seminars, the DTI also sees the possibility of creating NSB desks in barangay town halls where potential and existing entrepreneurs have a more convenient avenue to seek aid in doing business. (CSL)