Women-owned businesses in Bangladesh need better access to markets and corporate value chains to boost the country’s inclusive growth and to create more jobs, the World Bank Group said at the Corporate Connect 2020 Conference & Business Fair.
Built on the success of a just-completed pilot project, the World Bank Group together with WEConnect International launched a project that will help 1,200 women-owned businesses connect with potential large local and multinational corporate buyers. It will help enterprises access value chains and expand their business. The project is supported by the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi).
The earlier pilot project provided capacity building training to over 150 women entrepreneurs and facilitated linkages with large corporations through various business networking opportunities and nearly 90 percent of the beneficiaries reported improvements in their businesses. The project also led to the creation of the country’s first Supplier Diversity Advisory Committee.
“In Bangladesh, only 5 percent of formal micro, small and medium-sized companies are owned by women,” said Wendy Werner, IFC Country Manager for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. “As an investor in emerging markets, IFC strongly believes that to enable companies and economies to grow, we must reduce the gaps between women and men in the private sector.”
Over the next three years, the project will help create a database of Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs in order to increase their participation in corporate value chains. The more that can be done to connect women-owned businesses with corporate buyers, the greater will be the benefit to both women entrepreneurs and to Bangladesh.
Globally, women-owned small and medium businesses earn less than one percent of the money spent by large corporations and governments on suppliers. Connecting women entrepreneurs to corporate buyers helps to diversify value chains while delivering equitable, broad-based economic growth.
Original source: World Bank
Published on 09 February 2020
