BY DELISA THWALA
MBABANE- The International Trade Centre (ITC) in collaboration with the European Union (EU) has capacitated 15 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) on accessing Environmental Social Governance (ESG).
The two-day workshop held at the Hilton Garden Inn commenced yesterday and ends today.
ITC Agri-Business and Value Chain Manager Andile Zikalala said in order to support the development of MSMEs in Eswatini and business support organisations capacity in environmental ESG, ITC conducted an ESG Framework due diligence assessment for each MSME between September and October 2022, and validation of the assessments were done virtually in November 2022.
He said the workshop presented and discussed the results of the ESG assessments that were conducted.
The workshop also highlighted common risks that were identified and recommended steps that MSMEs could take to strengthen their policies, procedures, training, monitoring, documentation, and reporting and then formulate individual capacity development plans for MSMEs.
“These would help them to raise their maturity level in each area of focus. Another objective is to provide the framework for the capacity building sessions and the sustainability plans and strategies to be developed for the MSMEs,” he said. Zikalala stated that after they went through the evaluation, they then developed a tool or the next steps they would need to take in order to go to the next step of the ESG.
