KNOW your money, track down its every movement and invest your money wisely.
This is the main message University of the South Pacific’s Graduate School of Business lecturer Dr Avanish Shukla conveyed to 20 women entrepreneurs who attended a one-day capacity building workshop on ‘Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: Policy, Profit and Digital Power’ yesterday.
Dr Shukla said they had often observed that financially disadvantaged women entrepreneurs sometimes lacked information on policies, they did not know how to track down their money – both expenses and surplus – and also found it difficult to market their products and services.
The workshop held at the MBA Conference Room at the USP’s Statham Campus focused on educating the participants of the different policies that affected women entrepreneurs in Fiji, accounting solutions like cashbooks to track down their revenues and expenditures, and DIY (do it yourself) marketing concepts to promote their goods and services.
He said accounting can involve both simple and complex
processes.
“That’s why, through cognitive learning like discussions on this cashbook can be represented in a very simple way and maintained very easily, so that is more effective for small organisations. But as soon as organisations grows up, we need to include more complex processes where you will need experts,” Dr Shukla said in an interview.
“So whenever we go for this kind of workshops, we always see that contents are tailormade and most suited for the audiences.”
During the workshop, Dr Shukla observed the participants were unable to differentiate personal and economic transactions and often made the mistake of using the same cashbox.
“They should understand different cash for different purposes, they cannot have a common cash box.
“Secondly, sometimes they fail to track down their cash movements, so this is another reason why small-scale businesses sometimes faced financial difficulties.”
“There are lots of opportunities, we just need to change our perspective and we can make lots of money.”
He said the Government also had a lot of good initiatives for small scale entrepreneurs but added there was lack of awareness to allow those operators to access it.
The full-day workshop was a collaboration between the Business Assistance Fiji (BAF) and the USP’s Graduate School of Business, attended by start-up owners, market vendors, small business operators and aspiring entrepreneurs.
BAF acting general manager Nitika Singh said the collaboration reflected their commitment to empowering women entrepreneurs by equipping them with the tools and knowledge to thrive.
“Their success not only drives business growth but also strengthens families, communities, and Fiji’s economy as a whole,” Ms Singh said.
—
Note: This article was first published under the headline: Know your money and invest wisely, Dr Shukla tells womenpreneurs in Page 14 of the print version of The Fiji Times dated Tuesday, September 30, 2025
