The Small Firms Association have released the findings of its survey on Small Businesses’ Key Priorities for 2012, which shows that the marketplace has stabilised, but the focus is still very much on reducing costs.
Commenting on the findings, SFA Director, Patricia Callan said, “this survey clearly shows that costs in Ireland continue to hamper the development of small business. Labour costs and flexibility remain the most significant problems facing small businesses, but non-pay costs, such as energy, commercial rates, rents and government regulatory costs, including licences and charges, are exerting huge pressures on the ability of small businesses to invest, develop, expand and create new jobs. The recommendations of the Government’s Advisory Group on Small Business to tackle these issues must be speedily progressed.”
Callan commented “many companies have successfully stabilised their operations during the past years of crisis and are now looking to grow their business. Key to this will be their ability to access new markets and develop and launch new products. The state enterprise support infrastructure, in particular Enterprise Ireland, needs to proactively work with established companies who have between 10-50 employees, but so far have been purely trading domestically to see what opportunities there are for them to develop overseas. A policy which purely relies on high potential start-ups and those companies that have a desire to export from inception will not solve our jobs crisis. We need to move the mindset of the majority of small businesses to develop their business overseas. As a small open economy, we must export 85% of everything we produce.”
For companies that are expanding and in certain sectors, it is clear that the retention of employees and finding people with the right skills is becoming a challenge. Callan stated “It is vital that our education and training policies are industry-led, and take account of real job opportunities now and into the future, rather than simply training people for jobs that don’t exist. Investment must also be made to support management development, which will have a real return for the economy, in improving business performance in areas such as leadership and communications. Better management businesses mean more jobs”.
Callan concluded, “whilst this survey on firm priorities is reasonably positive, it is clear that a quarter of companies are still struggling and need to restructure to save jobs and to access vital working capital. We need the government to deliver on its commitment to introduce a loan guarantee scheme for small firms by the end of March and to ensure that the two banks meet their €3bn lending commitments to small business this year. It should also revisit its decision to cut the employer redundancy rebate from 60 to 15%, as the cost implications of this for struggling businesses will be that they have to make even more people redundant. Government policy must begin to join the dots!”
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