EYE OPENER
Kiki's blog for November 2009
November 2009
The Ethnic Minority Business Task Force: was set up in November 2007 by Margaret Hodge as an ad hoc advisory body to advise Government on promoting ethnic minority led business in the UK. It was jointly funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, and concluded its work this July.
It’s been an honour to be a member working alongside a fantastic group of people from business, academia, the British Bankers Association and the public and voluntary sectors. We were deftly chaired by co-chair Tom Riordan, CEO of YF who was later joined by James Caan, entrepreneur and “Dragons Den” guru.
The Task Force’s early objectives were:
To serve as a strategic influencing body.
To Influence the supplier diversity of public and private sector procurement.
To affect practice of financial institutions in relation to access to finance for ethnic minority businesses.
I’m not sure we were wholly effective in our objectives given that the government policy landscape has changed so much in 2½ years and the global economic melt-down changing priorities yet again. However our research and subsequent EMBFT report and recommendations were a considerable step forward in positioning EMBs as critical economic contributors to UK plc.
For the EMBTF report click here:
Click Here
The Govt response to the EMBTF report is here: www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/enterprise/benefits/minorities/page53439.html
The Govt press release is here: http://nds.coi.gov.uk/