Storm Clouds Are Brewing for the Global Economy
January 8th, 2019 – The outlook for the global economy in 2019 has darkened. International trade and investment have softened. Trade tensions remain elevated. Several large emerging markets underwent substantial financial pressures last year. Agains...
ArtificialIntelligence – 79 partners from 21 countries to develop an AI-demand-platform with €20 million EU funding
The AI4EU project officially starts this month, with a kick-off meeting among the partners in Barcelona today (10 January): AI4EU brings together 79 top research institutes, SMEs and large enterprises in 21 countries to build a focal point for artificial ...
DBS Launches SME Portal
January 9th, 2019 – To help SMEs in their digital transformation journey, DBS launched DBS SME Connect, a portal for SMEs across all industries to access web-based business tools and services. SMEs who are trying to keep pace with the technological ...
Afreximbank, AGF Back SMEs in Africa with $30m
December 31th, 2018 – The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has signed an agreement with the African Guarantee Fund (AGF) for a 30 million dollar re-guarantee facility to support African Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The Director, Trad...
Alibaba’s world electronic trading platform in Europe for the first time
December 10th, 2018 – On December 5th, the Alibaba Group and the Belgian federal government signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation, marking the European arrival of the world e-commerce platform (eWTP) project promoted by Alibaba. What t...
Why South African SMEs should adopt disruptive tech
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution – characterised by the interconnection of technologies, blurring the lines between the world’s physical, digital, and biological domains – continues to change the working landscape across the globe at a rapid pace...
Top 5 reasons SMEs fail to get the most out of sales training
Experience shows that simply investing in sales training does not guarantee improved results. Here, we examine five pitfalls that are holding SMEs’ training programmes back. Many SMEs assume investing in sales training will automatically increase sa...
P2P lending can plug Southeast Asia’s US$175B business finance gap
While P2P lending is relatively young in Southeast Asia, there is still ample room for growth Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has emerged as a popular alternative financing option for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Asia. In 2016, P2P lending ...
Greater EU SVHC substitution incentives needed – industry
Trade bodies propose REACH authorisation improvement measures November 22th, 2018 – EU authorities should “motivate” companies to actively look for alternatives to SVHCs by providing “positive incentives”, such as tax cuts fo...
The opportunity cost of doing business for SMEs in Africa
November 30th, 2018 – The African economy has gathered momentum over the years, with an estimated increase of 3.8% of the real output growth in 2017. As the largest economies gradually strengthen, the 2018/2019 performance should reach 4.1% accordin...
