CLARK FREEPORT ZONE, Pampanga — Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez reported to President Rodrigo R. Duterte the significant initiatives of the agency in terms of providing access to market to small businesses over the past two years.
In his message during the National MSME Summit 2018, Lopez cited the Go Lokal marketing platform of DTI in collaboration with select retail partners to aid micro, small and medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs) for mainstreaming market access incubation, marketing and branding.
“Through this, our MSMEs have a 365 day exposure not just on weekends, and in prime location retail markets to be able to attract potential buyers,” he added.
To date, there are already 56 Go Lokal stores nationwide with 332 MSME suppliers.
Lopez also reported that these stores were able to generate PhP33 million sales from December 2016 to May 2018.
With this Go Lokal stores, DTI and its partner institutions were able to give free market access incentives to small entrepreneurs as long as they have quality products.
“They have free shelf space thus, they were able to save up to PhP7 million in terms of rental space. They were also able to save the listing fee of PhP3 million per product and their products have every day mainstream exposure,” Lopez said.