State-owned Khmer Enterprise, UK charity Oxfam and Platform Impact Co Ltd are joining forces on the 2022-2024 Programme Impact Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (PRISME), which aims to accelerate and scale up impact-driven entrepreneurship and responsible financing activities in Cambodia.

In partnership with Cambodia Investor Club (CIC), Platform Impact is to design and implement strategic, technical and logistic plans that offer high quality supports for entrepreneurs to set up and launch impact-driven enterprises (IDE) in the Kingdom.

“PRISME is a new, innovative and best-in-class entrepreneurship programme aiming to build, develop and empower impact-driven enterprises – hybrid organisations blending business with mission, and combining an unwavering focus on meeting societal needs with entrepreneurial energy and market discipline to prove that making a profit and having positive impacts on society are not mutually-exclusive ideas,” according to a press release.

It described IDEs as inclusive and environmentally sensitive businesses that use the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for decision making and actions.

Platform Impact public-private partnership senior associate Van David underscored that Environmental Social Governance (ESG) has sparked new and growing trends over the last decade, and that today every commercial bank in the US, EU and Asia must set up an ESG department.

He said sustainable and inclusive businesses for ESG investing are in rapidly growing global demand. “Cambodian SMEs should start appreciating and embracing the ESG concept and build resilience in how inclusive their business could be in 10, 20 years down the road if they were to survive and thrive on the international markets.”

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Author: May Kunmakara

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

Publication date: 15 December 2021