Small and medium sized businesses, those same firms that use contractors and freelancers to such great effect, need more support in growing their reach.
At least, that’s what the Confederation of British Industry said recently, with the trade industry body drawing particular attention to the need for UK firms to grow enough to begin exporting their goods and services abroad. There’s a whole shedload of things that can be done to make it easier for SMEs to expand their overseas business dealings, including providing easier access to financing schemes for exportation, reviewing the Bribery Act, and providing tax breaks as an incentive to drive UK exports.
The new remarks from the CBI follow hot on the heels of the news that UK trade was found to have been down once more, eradicating hopes that the economic recovery could rely in part on business generated by exportation. The UK economy could indeed benefit from helping SMEs break into foreign markets, according to the House of Lords, as a recent report made the prediction that SME turnover is something along the lines of £100 million on an annual basis.
If you ask me, providing help to SMEs to grow in order for them to branch out into exporting overseas could stand to aid the freelancing community in a big way – it’s no joke how much small firms have come to rely on the interim working community to provide the requisite skills and expertise they need at an affordable cost. The flexibility of freelancers and umbrella company contractors is just the thing an SME needs in order to keep its payroll costs low yet still complete projects on time and under budget, and any mention of something that could benefit small businesses would also come to benefit the self-employed these small firms use so often.
I can only hope that the Government heeds the words of the Confederation of British Industry and decides to take action to make it easier for SMEs to access export markets in the future. Doing so could be a real boon to the UK economic recovery effort – and could do much better in the long run than some of these other Government schemes and initiative that do little more than make thing more complicated and less effective in the long run; yes, I know that the old joke is that one hand never seems to know what the other is doing, but when you’ve got fingers from both hands firmly lodged in the proverbial nostrils of the UK government, it’s no wonder that nothing seems to happen when it comes to actual help descending from on high to those of us down in the trenches!
