Fujairah Municipality's programme allowing citizens to start home businesses is a good step for the individuals involved, the emirate and the country. As The National reported yesterday, the My Project Licence provides low-cost trade licences for Emiratis to promote and sell home-made products and showcase them at food fairs. These products include meals, confectionery, clothing, handmade crafts and incense.
Although this step was taken to regulate a growing market, it is fully in line with the UAE’s support for entrepreneurship and innovation at a grass roots level. Young people, especially women, have been increasingly using social media to create their own brands, promote them to the public and sell what they make at home. Although these small businesses have been very popular, many of them were not officially registered by the municipality, meaning there was no guarantee that they followed official health and safety standards.
Licensing these businesses under this umbrella scheme with a low cost – Dh100 – will protect customers and the entrepreneurs themselves, and benefit the economy of the emirate. Small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of many economies – in Dubai, SMEs account for 42 per cent of the workforce, and make a big contribution to the GDP.
Fujairah will benefit the most from this initiative, as it will mean that people who might otherwise leave for larger cities will remain living and working in the emirate. It will also open up opportunities to those, such as young mothers, who prefer to work from home.
If this scheme proves successful, it could be extended to other emirates and broadened to include expatriates who want to work from home, and avoid some of the high business start-up costs that prevail now. The development of a knowledge economy requires innovative thinking that often starts at home. Some of the most valuable companies in the world, including Apple and Microsoft, began in the garages of their founders’ families.