2nd 'buyer-seller meet' to help SMEs penetrate CLMV markets

The event provided business networking and matching opportunities for 16 SME clusters in CLMV countries to connect with more than 60 prospective traders from Thailand, Japan and other countries.

The 60 prospective buyers that attended the seminar ranged from medium to large companies, such as Jim Thomson, CP All, Big C Supercenter, and Siam Makro, and around 30 were Japanese.

Takamasa Fujioka, director of SJC, said Japan’s collaboration with Thailand, which is in the centre of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), could play a crucial role in creating new opportunities for SMEs in the CLMV countries. A wide range of products, especially agricultural, food and handmade products, could be exported to regional and global markets.

"Sasin and the Mekong Institute have been doing similar things, which is to help with the development of this region, so we decided to collaborate. We formed an MoU two years ago with the aim to create this kind of matching seminar. We received good responses from the SME clusters in the GMS region in our first seminar in March and from overwhelming requests, so we arranged this second meeting," he said.

Fujioka said that even though small and medium-sized enterprises in the GMS could produce quality products, they still needed buyers. SMEs normally have problems with market penetration because they do not have connections or the knowledge about the needs of the regional and global markets. Since MI is located in Khon Kaen, it does not have strong connections with the business society, and that is where Sasin comes in to fill the missing link.

SJC is a unit of the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He said that apart from purchasing products, large buyers from Japan and Thailand could also provide a transfer of technology and expertise. They are willing to provide market know-how to these SME producers since they are strong believers in corporate social responsibility. They can also help SME clusters gain access to finance, an area that has proved problematic for all SMEs in the region.

Madhurjya Kumar Dutta, programme manager for trade and investment facilitation at MI, said the "buyer-seller meeting" was part of the "Capacity Development for Integrating CLMV Economies" project that the institute has been implementing for three years to narrow the development gaps among Asean countries.

Dutta said clusters could help SMEs through greater access to finance and market penetration, and save development costs through the exchange of market knowledge and expertise. Meanwhile MI can provide information of how to utilise free-trade agreements and on trade regulations, the cost of doing business and details on prospective buyers in each country.

MI is developing an online portal called "Product Market Intelligence" to help SMEs gain market information and to identify the right market for their products, he said. The institute is also working on a deal with Alibaba to take it to the next level and trade these SMEs’ products online.