H.E. Mr. Heinz Edmund Walker, the new Swiss Ambassador, and Mr. Joerg Schneider representative of SECO (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) visited Swisscontact on February 9th 2010. The Regional Director for SE Asia, Mr. Peter Bissegger gave a briefing on Swisscontact activities and achievements.

Five years after the tsunami, SPAN comes to an end in December 2009. At the occasion of the project phase-out, Swisscontact invited the Government and development partners to a seminar on ‘Business Recovery in Aceh’ that took place in Jakarta on the 17th of November 2009. The purpose of the event was to share results and discuss lessons-learnt from the project. SPAN has supported more than 1,450 micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSME) through a demand-oriented mix of financial and technical assistance. It directly created and sustained more than 8,440 jobs in the supported businesses. The failure rate of assisted business is below 2%.

A Planning Workshop was held for recipients of the SEEP Network global grants for Urban Value Chain Development from 27 April to 1 May. Mercy Corps, Swisscontact, PUPUK and Micra are the consortium members implementing the value chain work in the Tofu and Tempe sectors of greater Jakarta. Mary McVay, Aly Miehlbradt and Sonali Chowdhury from SEEP Washington provided inputs. The workshop also had participants from similar programmes in Kenya and India.

Internal staff development has been identified as a key area of focus for 2009 to keep up with international good practices in terms of project design, implementation, and monitoring and impact measurement. Accordingly, Swisscontact Indonesia has designed a series of Internal Capacity Building Workshops for its core staff in 2009 and the first workshop was held on 5 th and 6th March in Jakarta. This two-day workshop, with 29 participants, focused on operationalizing the Private Sector Development Strategy of Swisscontact.  The topics ranged from the conceptual framework and operational issues of the M4P (Making Markets Work for the Poor) approach, monitoring and concepts for impact measurement, understanding the LFA, to developing an internal documentation system for sector reports and intervention designs.

In 2005, cocoa commodity in Flores suffered greatly due to a pest attack, which reduced 70% of its product capacity; this major loss would have been prevented if farmers were well informed on managing cocoa plantation. Seasonal calendar has been found to effectively help farmers design appropriate steps relating to product improvement of cocoa commodity. The Farmer Association of Wolosoko, Ende, Nusa Tenggara Timur has managed to design a cocoa seasonal calendar during the ‘Favorable Planting Methods’ training, held by LED NTT (Local Economic Development – Nusa Tenggara Timur Project) Swisscontact on 16th February to 20th February 2009. Seventy farmers participated and seven trainers from different skills background facilitated the training. The topics discussed in the training were on pests and diseases, pruning, fertilization, harvesting, sanitation - collectively known as P3S - clone screening, various cultivation methods, seedling, seeds management and quality standard of wet seeds.  LED NTT Project aims to improve the performance of three economic sectors (cashew, cocoa, seaweed) in selected districts of NTT (East Flores, Sikka, Ende and Alor). Collaboration with local governments on improving the business environment in the district will enhance business registration hence the project will indirectly contribute to increased government income. Details of project click here

Realizing the importance of strengthening the market by partnering with a reliable business partner, SMEP (Small Medium Enterprise Promotion)  Project, funded by SDC, facilitated a business linkage between garment cluster of Cipulir, South Jakarta and PT. Bali Nirwana Garment (PT. BNG) - an apparel manufacturing export company. Contract will be given from PT BNG to Garment Producers in Cipulir to produce high quality denim. Therefore, it is necessary to train employees on skills development.

On February 16 2009, PT BNG HRD Manager, Ms Meaty, conducted a one-day assessment of an ongoing training of 25 employees in the regency of Karawang. The training focused on Quality Standard Sewing Skills held in Jakarta and Karawang. SMEP Project of Swisscontact Indonesia aims to increase competitiveness of garment cluster in South Jakarta. One of the innovative ways is establishing a promotional website, www.garmentindo.com , with support from IT students of Binus University, Jakarta. Details of SMEP project please click here