The Seychelles Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) yesterday launched its first business centre and website.

The centre, located on the second floor of Ebrahim House on Francis Rachel Street, was officially opened by SCCI chairman Marco Francis in the presence of British high commissioner Lindsay Skoll and the managing director of Airtel Seychelles, Amadou Dina, both co-partners in the projects.

Mr Francis said the business centre, which is dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship skills among youths and female entrepreneurs especially, came about with the collaboration of different partners notably the British high commission which provided the computers, printer and scanner and Airtel 1MB free internet for the chamber.

“The SCCI business centre is the centre for young entrepreneurs. People who want to enter the business world this is where they can come and learn how to do their business plan. Because nowadays when you go and borrow money the bank requires that you have a business plan,” said Mr Francis, adding that this centre can train its clients how to go about it.

Mr Francis said the centre also wants to mentor them and one way of doing that is to teach the young entrepreneurs how to do bookkeeping, accounting, strategic planning which are all very important aspects of business management.

Mr Francis also mentioned Intel Education which has donated an educational software to the chamber. 

“So we will be working closer with Intel but also with our local businessmen. Seychelles has a lot of businessmen who want to give something back to society. They want to help our people. So this centre is for the people of Seychelles,” said Mr Francis, urging even people who have been in business for many years to also come visit the centre.

“You can come check your emails here, do photocopy, scanning. The business centre can be your little office,” said Mr Francis.

Mrs Skoll commended the vision of the SCCI chairman and his team for setting up the centre, saying she is very happy to have been able to equip it with the computers and associated gadgets.

The high commissioner said she thinks the government of Seychelles has been doing some really good work with regard to business development. 

Noting it was one of the subjects of discussion at the recent business forum, Mrs Skoll said anyway the UK can help in the promotion of business in Seychelles makes her extremely proud. 

“Today I really want to reach out to the small people. They could be young, could be old, they could be the housewife sitting at home; they could be somebody who is retired. Anybody who’s got the dream to start a business can come here, get the advice, get the equipment and people to help them and start making it a reality,” said Mrs Skoll. 

Mrs Skoll also expressed the wish to see more women come forward and make good use of the centre. 

“As soon as you empower a woman economically you empower a whole household,” she remarked.

Mr Dina said Airtel is happy to bring its support to the development of local businesses in all sectors of the economy.

“As a telecommunications company we will not miss the chance of bringing in our support. We will continue in terms of new technology, support, 

the internet and all that is needed so that people can access the world of business very easily,” said Mr Dina, while expressing the company’s wish to continue helping the SCCI in its work towards local business empowerment.

“This year we have started with the provision of internet service and technical support, but we will not stop there. We will go forward so that businesses here in Seychelles get together not only for their development but also for the progress of the country as a whole,” said Mr Dina. 

In partnership with the Victoria Computer Services, the SCCI also launched its website yesterday at the newly opened business centre. The website will allow users to interact with chambers of commerce worldwide.

It will liaise with chambers overseas and in order to combat scams, the website will create links to overseas partners who will verify whether it’s a credible or dodgy investor.
 
Michelle Lafortune, business development manager at Switch Pty Limited, had the honour of launching the website.

Forrás: www.nation.sc