"Introduce Delivery Price Linkage System"... Ministry of SMEs and Startups Holds 'SME Policy Sharing Council'

Minister Lee Young Listens to Voices of SME Representative Groups on the 15th
Discusses Resolving Market Unfairness and Strengthening Competitiveness Including Delivery Price Linkage System
"Will Prepare Rational Measures for Delivery Prices and Promote Institutionalization"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwak Minjae] The Ministry of SMEs and Startups met with heads of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) organizations to hear their on-site voices regarding the rise in prices and raw material costs. This was a follow-up measure after the presidential work report to discuss ways to resolve market unfairness and strengthen SME competitiveness.

On the 15th, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups held the 'SME Policy Sharing Council' at Conference House Dalgaebi near City Hall Station in Seoul. The council was attended by Lee Young, Minister of SMEs and Startups; Kim Ki-moon, Chairman of the Korea Federation of SMEs; Lee Jeong-han, President of the Women Entrepreneurs Association; Lim Byung-hoon, Chairman of the Innobiz Association; Seok Yong-chan, Chairman of the Mainbiz Association; Choi Bong-gyu, Chairman of the SME Convergence Central Association; along with about 10 government officials.

The SME organization heads attending the council unanimously agreed that a prompt introduction of a delivery price linkage system is necessary to effectively resolve the difficulties faced by SMEs. The reason is that while raw material prices increased by an average of 47.6% in 2021 compared to 2020, the delivery price increase rate was only 10.2%, and operating profit margins decreased from 7.0% to 4.7%, indicating significant challenges for SMEs.

The SME sector welcomed the government's 'Labor Market Reform Promotion Direction' announced last month. However, they called for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups to take an active role and effort in labor regulation flexibility, including improvements to the '52-hour workweek system' to resolve chronic labor shortages and overtime work difficulties.

They also proposed the need to expand scale-up financing for innovative SMEs, promote collaboration and mergers between companies to discover new businesses, and establish a foundation for expanding new growth engines.

Additionally, they discussed fundamental measures to strengthen the competitiveness of SMEs and ventures, including ▲improving regulations on SME and venture business succession ▲eradicating technology theft that hinders SME innovation growth ▲spreading smart factory solution exports ▲introducing value chain-type smart clusters ▲and establishing regional-based collaboration matching platforms.

Minister Lee Young emphasized, “We will prepare reasonable measures and institutionalize them so that SMEs can appropriately adjust delivery prices.”

He added, “We are facing a triple high (high prices, high interest rates, high exchange rates) complex crisis while the COVID-19 pandemic has not completely ended. As the Ministry of SMEs and Startups is the main ministry overseeing the real economy, we will quickly resolve the current difficulties and strengthen on-site communication and policy innovation so that SMEs and startups can become key private innovation players in the digital economy.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.