About the Pacific Business Mentoring Programme
The Pacific Islands Private Sector Organization (PIPSO) originally identified a need to assist the private sector throughout the Pacific Islands as a way of strengthening the economies of the region.
The expected overall outcome of the programme is to create wealth and employment, to increase business efficiency and capability, and to contribute to growth in the economies o the countries participating in the programme.
The New Zealand Aid Programme agreed to fund the PBMP such that it could be be established in 11 countries over a three year period started in 2010.
The full rollout programme is:
A team of 5 business mentors from NZ will visit each country for a 1 week period twice each year, during which time each mentor will assist four businesses.
The objectives of the Pacific Business Mentoring Programme are:
- To strengthen business management and empower Pacific Businesses to participate competively in both the local and international economies.
- To identify and train local mentors to be effective and to ensure sustainability and ownership of the programme.
The measures of Success of the Pacific Business Mentoring Programme are to:
- Increase staff numbers
- Increase turnover of each business
- Increase export sales for those businesses who are exporters
- Increase the use of business plans, marketing plans and financial information
- Achieve high levels of client company satisfaction.
Pacific Business Mentoring Programme - Update January 2013
Three years on from the start of this programme in April 2010, the PBMP has now been successfully established in 10 Pacific Island countries namely:
The Cook Islands
Tonga
Samoa
Vanuatu
Solomon Islands |
PNG (Port Moresby and Lae)
Fiji
Kiribati
Niue
Tuvalu |
We currently have 70 volunteer mentors involved and over 700 business’s participating and benefitting from the programme.
The Pacific Business Mentor training Programme has also been successfully established in all countries with the objective of enhancing the impact of the mentoring activities by helping business owners develop their skills in operating a business successfully.
Our independent outcome survey, which surveys ALL business’s participating, is indicating that there has been an increase in employees as a result of the mentoring support that we have provided. On average, employee numbers have increased by 0.9 people across the companies participating in the latest survey.
This is great news as our fundamental objective is economic development in each country and job creation is a major indicator of economic development taking place.
In 2011, we embarked on an extension of our mentoring services to include State Owned Enterprise CEO’s (and their Boards) to assist these organisations adopt a commercial operating model. This is a pilot programme involving the Ports, Airports and Energy SOE in both the Cook Islands and Samoa and involves a more specialised mentoring focus. It is envisaged the this programme will be expanded into other countries after the successful completion of the pilot programme.
Our experience to date has shown that providing business mentoring services into Pacific Island countries is an excellent way of assisting economic development in the private sectors of each country. Business mentors NZ mentoring success in NZ has translated well into these countries and we can see many more opportunities for such services in the future.