Under Cambodia’s ASEAN Chairmanship in 2022, the Fifth ASEAN Inclusive Business Summit will be held in a hybrid format on 26 and 27 October 2022 in Siem Reap, the ancient capital and world heritage of Cambodia. The event is organised as part of ASEAN efforts to promote an enabling environment for Inclusive Business (IB) in the region.

H.E. Kitti Settha Pandita CHAM Prasidh, Senior Minister, Minister of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation of Cambodia, will preside over to announce the opening of the Fifth ASEAN Inclusive Business Summit. The event will be participated by different stakeholders from government agencies, business associations, impact investors, companies with IB business lines, business facilitators, and development partners from ASEAN countries and beyond.

Under the motto “Together ASEAN IBee”, the event will:

• review the progress made in promoting a better enabling environment for IB enabling environment (IBee) in the various ASEAN countries and globally, and discuss suggestions for regional collaboration on IB promotion;

• discuss opportunities for collaborating on policy promotion instruments such as IB business coaching, IB accreditation, IB financing;

• learn how certain IB businesses deliberately promote women’s economic empowerment and climate adaptation as well as environmental solutions;

• provide the opportunity to discuss innovative business examples of private sector companies having created commercially viable solutions for the poor and low-income people;

• facilitate a south-south exchange on IB with countries from South and Central Asia as well as Africa, currently also starting IB initiatives and wishing to learn from ASEAN economies and Cambodia how to promote IB; and

• offer a general forum for exchanging and learning from innovative IB business cases in the region.

Inclusive Businesses (IB) are commercially viable private sector business lines that create systemic scaled-up, innovative and systemic solutions for the relevant income and living standard problems of the poor and low-income people (the BoP).

The Fifth ASEAN Inclusive Business Summit is organised by the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation of Cambodia (MISTI) in cooperation with the ASEAN Secretariat; the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); the Inclusive Business Action Network (iBAN), a global program funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft Fuer Internationale Zusammernarbeit (GIZ) GmbH; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and Oxfam; all actively engaged in the Inclusive Business promotion. MISTI, in cooperation with the ASEAN Business Advisory Council through the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, will also organise ASEAN Inclusive Business Awards 2022 on 26 October 2022 in the Gala Dinner of the Fifth ASEAN Inclusive Business Summit.

Since 2020, Cambodia has been a leading country in ASEAN in promoting inclusive business. In August 2022, the Royal Government of Cambodia issued a decision on the establishment of the IB Steering Group, under the leadership of MISTI with the involvement of representatives from line ministries and business associations, to lead the Inclusive Business initiative in Cambodia.

IB promotion is an activity of the ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (ACCMSME), the sectoral body under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) pillar coordinating MSME development in the region. The Summit contributes to the implementation of the ASEAN Strategic Action Plan for SME Development 2016 – 2025.

For more information, please contact the IBeeC secretariat in MISTI (ibeecsecretariat@gmail.com and cc: freelanceadore@gmail.com) or Mr. In Rotha (+855 89 322 292/ +855 70 495 429).