​Gauteng News
Work is underway to integrate Small, Medium Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) into value chains by providing both financial support and business development assistance.
The province is reviving the township economy through supporting local ecosystems for entrepreneurship and investing in infrastructure and enterprise development through mobilised financing towards this segment.
Furthermore, the province began the journey towards the revitalisation of the township economy by embarking on a major consultation process, where it interacted with no less than 50 000 township entrepreneurs in 65 townships across the province.
A total of 917 infrastructure maintenance projects have been allocated to registered township based SMMEs, to the value of R598 million.
Last year, the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) spent R 6 billion on procuring goods and services from township entrepreneurs up from R1.5 billion from the previous financial year.
To date, the province has registered more than 6000 township entrepreneurs into the Central Supplier Database (CSD).  
To diversify township economies – especially in the Sedibeng region, the Gauteng Provincial Government, through the new Township Economic Development Bill, is creating a new kind of economic zone, specifically created for townships SMMEs. 
These will be known as Township Enterprise Zones which provide access to funding, procurement, better bylaws, targeted tax breaks, and dedicated programmes including the new township economy partnership fund.
These efforts to sustain the SMMEs are in line with the programme for Transformation, Modernisation and Reindustrialisation, aimed at increasing substantially the number of black people, women, the youth and people with disabilities that participate in the mainstream economy of the GCR.
To ensure that more SMMES benefit and prosper from the economic programmes, GPG is hosting the Sedibeng SMMEs Conference on Tuesday under the theme- Reigniting the Sedibeng economy for inclusive growth.
This engagement follows a successful inaugural Sedibeng Investment Conference which took place on 15 October 2021 to re-ignite the regional economy and boost the province's employment creation efforts.
SMMEs are the key to job creation with about 50% of the private sector workforce thereby contributing about 40% to the GDP.
The sector is not without challenges. Some smaller producers and SMMEs often struggle to gain market access because they are not able to compete due to a lack of knowledge, information, skills or technology to meet market requirements. 
Concerns have been raised by SMME owners around access to financing, late payment for services rendered to government, a high regulatory burden, lack of access to information, economic infrastructure and rising fuel and utility costs among other things.
These challenges severely impact the viability of SMMEs and even force some out of business.
Working with social partners, GPG remains committed to improving the legal and regulatory environment, ensuring access to markets and finance, skills training, and access to quality infrastructure for SMMEs, especially in townships.