Representatives of the Association of Entrepreneurs of Paraguay (Asepy) met with Lea Giménez, future Chief of Staff of President-elect Santiago Peña. The objective of the meeting was to propose four proposals to continue promoting the entrepreneurial sector, the engine of the Paraguayan economy.
David Caballero, president of Asepy, thanked the opening of the next cabinet and announced that, among the requests expressed, are the financing, speeding up formalization processes, social security and technical assistance for entrepreneurs. There are four key points for the strengthening and development of the sector that drives the country’s economy and that represents 70% of the labor force.
“Since the beginning of Asepy, our purpose was to make Paraguay an easier place to undertake and, in line with that, this meeting took place with Dr. Lea Giménez, who will play an important role in the next Government. This meeting was to articulate and develop joint public policies that allow facilities to grow the businesses of entrepreneurs”, stressed David Caballero.
For her part, Martha Arriola, Executive Director of ASEPY, put some numbers into context. “According to a study we carried out, 65% of entrepreneurs expressed that the lack of capital is one of the main problems when starting a business, 71% do not have access to external financing and 57% of MSMEs do not have access to credits for their development, hence the importance of looking for alternatives and working with the Government”, stated Martha Arriola.
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Regarding formalization, Arriola stated that of the 833,420 MSMEs, which represent 95.7% of the companies in Paraguay, only 272,259 have RUC, a worrying figure; Therefore, according to what he said, it is urgent to implement differentiated tax incentives for entrepreneurs focused on formalization, as well as streamline formalization processes such as commercial and municipal patents, authorizations, among others.
Social security for entrepreneurs is another issue that was raised during the meeting with Dr. Lea Giménez. “SMEs employ 75% of the economically active population, but only 15% have IPS for their collaborators. Currently, 959 of the 1,046,362 independent workers contribute to the special retirement contribution regime at an extremely high cost, and without having the possibility of accessing social security,” lamented the executive.
In this sense, Arriola stressed the Importance of working on differentiated incentives for social security contributions aimed at the sector and in the regulation and implementation of Law No. 5741, which establishes a special system of benefits of the social security system (IPS) for microentrepreneurs.
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Finally, regarding technical assistance, Martha mentioned that an entrepreneur or independent worker fails, on average, in three ventures before consolidating a company. In addition, 7 out of 10 self-employed workers use resources from their businesses to cover their personal expenses.
From Asepy, the solutions proposed for this problem are the optimization of the offer of technical assistance in competitiveness for entrepreneurs, through the institutional articulation of the different entities linked to the training of entrepreneurs, as well as the empowerment of the Centers of Support for the Entrepreneur (CAE) and the institutional strengthening of the National System of MSMEs (SINAMIPYMES).
“We hope that in the next five years we will generate many of these spaces but, above all, we want more results so that all people who want to carry out their business ideas do so with more instruments, tools and better facilities,” Caballero concluded. .
