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Add to Preferred Sources📅 23 – 24 September 2024
Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic
The pandemic has reversed progress in key areas, including income inequality, thus the remaining years are critical to turn the statistics around, through effective partnerships matched with the usage of technologies, and pooling of resources and knowledge.
To meet the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the private sector will need to play a greater role by adopting inclusive business practices for the benefit of the economy and society.
Inclusive businesses are companies that “provide goods, services, and livelihoods on a commercially viable basis, either at scale or scalable, to people living at the base of the economic pyramid making them part of the value chain of companies’ core business as suppliers, distributors, retailers, or customers.” By providing capacity building and technical assistance, inclusive business (IB) models promote MSME development and support MSMEs to integrate into regional and global value chains.
Since 2017, ASEAN has mainstreamed the agenda of IB, calling member states to build an enabling environment to grow inclusive practices by businesses in the region. In 2023, ASEAN at the 55th ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) Meeting, endorsed the Plan of Action for the Promotion of Inclusive Business in ASEAN (2023-2027), outlining priority areas to strengthen regional cooperation on IB, covering policy advisory support to mainstream IB promotion in national economic development policies and the design of specific policy instruments identified in the Guidelines for the Promotion of Inclusive Business in ASEAN.
As governments in ASEAN are implementing such policies and strategies, it is critical to share tools, good practices, and opportunities to promote IB, as well as to provide concrete opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop inclusive business models.
The ASEAN Inclusive Business Forum is jointly organized by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Lao PDR, the ASEAN Secretariat, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Forum is a key deliverable of ESCAP’s project “Promoting inclusive business and investment for sustainable development in ASEAN” funded by the Government of China.