'How the State and Private Sector Can Partner to Boost Support to SMEs: Lessons From Chile and Malaysia'

Stephen Timm is a South African policy researcher and journalist who has written on small business and entrepreneurship for almost 10 years. Between 2003 and 2010 he wrote for Big news, a free sheet newspaper aimed at small business owners. He has since also written on small business for a number of other business publications, including Business Day, Business Report and Entrepreneur magazine. He currently writes for the government's news agency BuaNews, where he reports from Parliament. He has also travelled to four emerging countries in the last two years to research programmes and policies that the South African government can learn from to bolster support to small enterprises. Earlier this year he presented a research report, funded by the Department of Trade and Industry and economic think-tank Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) on what South Africa can learn from Chile and Malaysia to boost support to small businesses. The report was a follow up to a research report he presented last year for TIPS titled, How to boost support from small business: Lessons from Brazil and India. Timm also won the Africa SMME Award for Journalist of the year in 2005. He has a higher diploma in journalism from Rhodes University and a History Hons from UCT. He lives in Cape Town.