The International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF) has been assisting El Salvador in implementing a One Town, One Product Project since May 2014. Through assistance to incubate businesses and develop industrial clustering, this three-year initiative is expanding the sales channels of a distinctive local industry in El Salvador and enhancing the market value of its products.

In recent years, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs has been assisting Taiwan’s own distinctive local industries by promoting a “One Town, One Product” model, creating new cluster-type economies with high added-value. Yingge, a town famed for its ceramics industry just west of Taipei, is one such example.

In El Salvador, the town of Ilobasco has been similarly developing a superb pocket of potteries and handicrafts over the course of many years, but a lack of industrial clustering and integration of public sector resources has stymied rises in the value of merchandise, and low profits coupled with limited access to markets have kept the pace of such development relatively slow. In view of this, the TaiwanICDF selected Ilobasco as the site for its project and is now assisting the Salvadoran Ministry of Economy’s National Commission for Micro and Small Enterprises (CONAMYPE) in implementing the initiative.

According to Ileana Rogel, CONAMYPE’s Executive Director, Salvadoran authorities are attaching great significance to the project. She says that the project will have an extensive impact despite relatively modest inputs in terms of funding.

Five major aspects of the project involve consulting on OTOP development policies, strengthening organizational development, focusing on personnel training, promoting bilateral cooperation between Taiwanese and Salvadoran industries so as to enhance industrial development models, and expanding sales markets. Experts brought in to provide guidance are raising both production techniques and the quality of merchandise, and have committed to drawing on Taiwan’s experience of developing micro- and small-scale enterprises to assist CONAMYPE in establishing counseling systems for local industry. From assistance to the public sector in formulating policies and approaches that promote distinctive local industries through to direct assistance to those within the industry in establishing trade associations, the project is integrating various resources, facilitating clustering and industrial chains, as well as industrializing production. These efforts will greatly enhance the rather meager earnings that have previously been coming in from Ilobasco’s sales of craft products.

In terms of strategic planning, Salvadoran authorities see the project as a prototype that will shape the country’s industrial production development, beginning with the development of business incubation and industrial chains within the ceramics industry before extending the model to support the development of other industries in the future.

Related Pictures

no:1picture

• Update: 2018/03/01
• Hits:322