Media coverage
Sawa News Agency · 2022-11-16
PalThink for Strategic Studies held a dialogue session to discuss a policy paper by researcher Yahya Qaoud on supporting small youth-led entrepreneurial enterprises, as part of a project to promote entrepreneurship among Palestinian youth in partnership with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. The paper outlined major obstacles facing youth enterprises, including lack of financing, laws and government procedures, Palestinian division, taxes and fees, and the effects of the occupation and the siege on Gaza, and proposed alternatives such as establishing a Palestinian entrepreneurship observatory, updating legislation, and improving access to funding. Discussants and attendees also stressed the need for a supportive national policy, the development of technical and vocational education, and a stronger role for universities and social media in spreading an entrepreneurial culture.
PalThink for Strategic Studies held a dialogue session to discuss a policy paper by researcher Yahya Qaoud on supporting small youth-led entrepreneurial enterprises, as part of a project to promote entrepreneurship among Palestinian youth in partnership with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Fre…
PalThink for Strategic Studies held a dialogue session to discuss a policy paper entitled "Towards Effective National Policies to Support Small Youth Entrepreneurial Projects," prepared by researcher Yahya Qaoud, as part of the project "Enhancing Entrepreneurship for Palestinian Youth," implemented by PalThink in partnership with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.
The session, attended by more than 45 participants including students, writers, researchers, and academics, comes within the framework of PalThink’s work as an independent think-and-do tank that continuously works to produce knowledge on current issues.
The session, moderated by trainee Sundus Sabra, was opened by PalThink Director Omar Shaban, who welcomed the attendees and stressed his institution’s role in keeping pace with all political and economic developments at the national and regional levels. He noted that it is consistently distinguished by presenting high-quality research papers and inviting prominent expert discussants to enrich the culture of dialogue.
For his part, Qaoud pointed out that youth economic projects face many obstacles, including lack of funding, laws and government procedures in light of the Palestinian division, fees and taxes, and the absence of the ability to operate and compete, in addition to challenges related to the occupation and its blockade on Gaza, which has exacerbated the policy of economic dependency.
He presented a set of alternatives, most notably the establishment of a Palestinian Entrepreneurship Observatory, similar to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, whose task would be to follow the reality of entrepreneurship under the division and examine the challenges facing entrepreneurial projects, especially since the strategies for supporting entrepreneurship in Gaza are entirely different from those in the West Bank.
Qaoud spoke about the need to enact modern laws to support entrepreneurship, strengthen the resilience of Palestinian human capital by providing them with a decent life, incubate the entrepreneurial projects of university students and enable them to implement them, transform small relief projects into development projects, and enable young people to access sources of finance such as banks and lending institutions.
For her part, Samia Abdel Moneim, a university lecturer at the Faculty of Business Administration at Gaza University, commented that the researcher had discussed core themes adopted by advanced countries to advance youth entrepreneurship, such as Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and others.
She stressed that the most important causes of project failure are high taxes and fees, which constitute an obstacle to the establishment and management of entrepreneurial projects, in addition to entrepreneurs’ ignorance of the applicable laws. She recommended the need to provide allocations for entrepreneurs in the early stages of their projects so that they can reinvest the returns.
In turn, Ziad Al-Damagh, a lecturer at the Faculty of Administrative and Financial Sciences at Gaza University, said that the Gaza Strip needs a national policy to support entrepreneurial projects supervised by the public sector, the private sector, and civil society, in addition to developing technical and vocational education.
He added that even if national unity were achieved, the government sector would not be able to provide enough jobs for the "armies" of the unemployed. Therefore, the private sector would have a greater capacity to create job opportunities, and at the same time the entrepreneurial project must have a competitive advantage, and its owner must be self-confident and fully knowledgeable about entrepreneurship.
The audience’s questions revolved around the feasibility of entrepreneurial projects in reducing unemployment, means of pressuring decision-makers to enact new laws suited to entrepreneurial projects, the role of universities and social media in spreading a culture of entrepreneurship among youth, and the impact of the digital economy on the Palestinian economy.
Text © Sawa News Agency — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source