YOUNG aspiring entrepreneurs now have a better chance to expand their business ideas and be job providers under the government’s Young Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES).
This was the message relayed by President Jioji Konrote while officiating at the launch of the University of the South Pacific’s 50th Anniversary in Suva on Monday.
Mr Konrote said USP students could even take the next step and start their own businesses through the Government’s YES program.
“The Government’s YES program provides immediate assistance in the form of grants to young and budding entrepreneurs who have innovative and bankable ideas or projects which financial institutions are not willing to support due to lack of collateral,” Mr Konrote said.
“Successful young aspiring entrepreneurs are then provided business training and mentorship to enable them to operate financially viable businesses.
“And USP has been a steadfast partner to the Fijian Government in widening the reach of the Fijian education system and fielding a more competitive and talented Fijian workforce.”
Mr Konrote said when the Fijian Government first considered the possibility of establishing a regional university based in Fiji in the mid-1960s, he was sure that no one realised that it would grow to become the centre for learning excellence that it was today.
“The past 50 years have been a period of tremendous change for USP and all of Fiji, and our young people today enjoy more opportunity in education than ever before in our history,” he said.
“The generation of young Fijians entering USP today are among the many in recent years that have benefited from the Government’s free education initiative, free textbooks and subsidised transportation to school.
“I was very proud to see that both of those programs have received record levels of funding in the latest national budget, and that TELS has been revamped in a number of ways to give students more options in how they pursue higher education.”
