The Industrial Guarantee and Loan Fund (IGLF) and the Foundation for Enterprise Management Innovations, Inc. (FEMI) have signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) for a capacity-building project for the “missing middle” or graduating micro-enterprises moving to become small and medium enterprises.
Under the terms of the MOA, FEMI will run several learning and development programs on business management such as finance, human resources, marketing, and operations management in the field of micro, small and medium enterprises with a special focus on developing the local “missing middle” entrepreneurs in one year.
IGLF’s funding assistance to FEMI will help growing micro-enterprises raise income levels and living standards, which will later give these enterprises access to more and cheaper sources of funds from established financial institutions like the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) via IGLF. The growing enterprises to be assisted by FEMI through this grant, which is estimated at around 300, may be considered prospective borrowers of DBP.
A salient feature of this undertaking is the documentation of experiences of SMEs that will benefit from assistance. Both the involvement of the academe and the production of reference materials support replication efforts in the future.
FEMI is a SEC-registered social entrepreneur catering to micro-enterprises that are in the growth stage.