In 2015, the iPrepare Business facility began working with country partners in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam to implement a regional project on “Strengthening the Disaster Resilience of Small and Medium Enterprises in Asia.” The project aimed to build disaster-resilient enterprises by:
1. identifying actions to strengthen resilience of SMEs;
2. providing technical assistance in strengthening resilience to selected SMEs on a demand-driven basis;
3. supporting governments in strengthening the enabling environment that promotes risk-sensitive and informed investments by SMEs; and
4. facilitating knowledge sharing at the regional level.
The project has been supported by the Integrated Disaster Risk Management Fund of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a fund financed by the Government of Canada, and the German Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ) through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) within the framework of the Global Initiative on Disaster Risk Management (GIDRM).
In April 2016 the Project partners convened “The Asian Business Forum 2016 – Risk Reduction and Resilience Building,” in Bangkok, which was an opportunity to share some of the work-in-progress of the regional project. At that time a brief Progress Report on the Regional Project was provided. The present Regional Synthesis Report updates and expands the April progress report, providing a more detailed overview of project outputs for each country, including the country Roadmaps developed since that time. Its aim is to identify key themes that emerged from the country projects that are of relevance to the broader Asian region, both in terms of the characteristics and needs of SMEs, and the policy approaches that seem likely to be most successful.