Employers organisation AHI aims to highlight the “disenabling” environment currently faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa at its upcoming conference.

The small business chamber’s day-long conference, described as the first it will be convening in a series of conversations between business, government and leading experts, plans to explore opportunities to create an enabling environment for SMEs to operate in.

“Politicians and pundits regularly emphasise the need to foster an enabling environment for SMEs and yet very few policies seem to do so,” said AHI president Bernard Swanepoel.

With SMEs, which contribute as much as 30% to South Africa's gross domestic product, always seeming to “be an afterthought” at the negotiating tables, the conference organisers had invited Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas and Department of Small Business Development director-general Professor Edith Vries to provide insight into plans to address this inertia, he added.

Among the issues believed to be “disenabling” SME’s were the perennial matter of the length of time it takes government and big business to pay their suppliers’ invoices, which severely hampers cash flow. A further issue was the withholding of some R5-billion in value-added tax refunds.

“Provincial government departments paid over 23 000 invoices late in 2016, totalling more than R2-billion. That is a total of R7-billion of capital withheld from small businesses, one of our best vehicles for job creation,” explained AHI CEO Dr Ernest Messina in a statement on Thursday.

“At the new R20 an hour minimum wage, R7-billion could provide over 18 000 people work for a year,” he added.

The conference, which will be held on April 5 in Centurion, boasts keynote speakers Business Unity South Africa CEO Tanya Cohen and Corruption Watch executive director David Lewis.

Panellists will include University of the Witwatersrand senior lecturer Lumkile Mondi, Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt and entrepreneurs Marnus Broodryk and Annie Malan, besides others, exploring how the various layers of government enable or stifle SME development and discussing how best to negotiate the minefield of regulation and bureaucracy.