News Stop: 11 March 2006

Here are some interesting news dated today (updated 6pm):

1. More financing avenues open up for small businesses (Erica Tay, Straits Times)
I thought that this might be of interest to some entrepreneurs who wants to seek help in financing. “With last week’s announcement of an extra $3.9 billion in state assistance for firms, securing grants and loans for a fledgling business should not be an uphill task – if you know where to get help” was placed below the article to remind people that there are money out there. What I thought is important from the article, is that the entrepreneurs can seek help from Enterprise Development Centres (EDCs) at industry associations, set up by SPRING .

Banks have actually started looking at lending to the SMEs these days. I will like to highlight one which I have a very good impression of. Believe it or not, it’s the Enterprise Banking division in DBS. They have supported a couple of entrepreneurial initiatives with also a passion in helping the entrepreneurs. I did a cold call to them once to find out what they have and their service actually impressed me in the end, compare to the other banks I called (whom I shall not name).

2. Be a sensitive new age company (Lee U-Wen, TodayOnline)
Sensitisation exercises are one way to better integrate staff from all sorts of backgrounds. It’s interesting that this problem is beginning to surface. Here is an interesting anecdote which I got when I was visiting Shanghai. A Singaporean told me that in Shanghai, the food & beverages businesses are thriving for the Taiwanese and Hong Kong people. The reason is because of relationship, because they tend to help each other more. For the Singaporeans, we tend to take the best deal and don’t have the tendency of helping each other out in a network. What am I trying to say here? Two issues really. There is a tendency for Singaporean employers (or some self-proclaimed “entrepreneurs) saying, “If I can hire a Indian and Chinese worker cheaper, why not?” They don’t even bother to socialize the Singaporean workers with these foreign workers. That is why we are getting social issues on Singaporean heartlanders not happy with the foreign talent issue. The solution to this problem is to integrate people to work together instead of trying to split the chasm of distrust and miscommunication between both groups of people. Of course, be kind to older Singaporean workers and their welfare. One thing Singaporean employers should learn is to think win-win instead of win-lose.