DTI says MSMEs recovering

TRADE Secretary Ramon M. Lopez on Wednesday said micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country that “fully stopped” operations last year had reached 34.2%.

He said the Trade department started seeing an improvement in October when the number of non-operating MSMEs went down by around 10% and 5% in November.

“‘Yung latest po natin ngayong March, bahagya pang bumaba to about 4.6% (It further decreased by about 4.6% this month),” Mr. Lopez said in a statement.

“Ibig sabihin mas kaunti na ‘yung nagsara, nagbubukas na ulit ‘yung iba (This means that some MSMEs are now reopening while only a few of them stop operations),” he added.

He made the comment in a message to the Association of Filipino Franchise, Inc.

The data was culled from the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) latest impact assessment survey, which was conducted from Jan. 28 to Feb. 10. A total of 15,434 MSMEs responded to the survey.

As of last count, 56.4% or 8,711 businesses were fully operating, 39.3% or 6,061 were partially operating, while 4.3% or 662 fully stopped. — Arjay L. Balinbin