Reports

In this past six months, we started running “PGN Cafe.” The name of this event is “Cafe,” but as you can guess, it’s not a real cafe. Rather, it’s an exchange room we’ve opened using Zoom.

In 2021, with a policy to promote small and medium size enterprises in the country, a new government policy was announced to increase the variety of businesses private company owners could be involved in and policies regarding small and medium size enterprises.
On this occasion, PREX received a commission from Oriental Consultants Global to arrange part of a training course on promoting small and medium-sized enterprises.

This training program was designed to clarify the issues facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in participants’ home countries and to strengthen the capacity of SMEs to formulate their own promotion policies.

Since its establishment in 1990, PREX has conducted human resource development training programs in Japan and overseas for 19,818 participants from 157 countries and regions. Of these, PREX has established alumni associations in 14 countries/regions for training participants in Japan and has maintained relationships with them through follow-up programs.

Continuing on from last year, the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Center (CJCC) conducted a training program in Japan for a total of 13 participants, including business managers and executives studying at the “KEIEIJUKU” management school of the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Center (CJCC).

Continuing from last year, this year’s training course theme was Sustainability and Innovation. We visited locations where both of these themes and ‘business management’, a high priority topic among managers, could be studied.
One of these was a request for a lecture to be given by Mr. Kotaro Nishibori, company president of Hiyoshi in Kyoto and representative of TCI Research Institute.

In 1997, about 7 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, PREX began its Central Asia training courses. Since then, approximately 1,500 participants have participated in PREX training courses which have been held in Japan, overseas, and online.

The goal of this training course is to enable government officials involved in promoting investment to formulate investment promotion strategies.
In the training course, participants had to look at their country’s strong points and its weak points, and think about the global interaction of the country’s industries’ overall value chain. Trainees then had to choose a process for selected industries with the most potential and learn how to formulate strategies.

PREX received a commission from JICA Kansai to conduct this training course for government officials working in tourism in developing countries. 12 participants from 12 countries came to Japan to participate in the course. After understanding Japan’s national and regional authorities involved in tourism and their policies, legislation as well as support systems, understanding subjects such as DMO (Destination Management/Marketing Organization), regional organizations’ roles, and after comparing them with the conditions in their own countries, the participants formulated action plans for sustainable regional tourism and for training personnel for this.

In this course, measures taken for the development of small-medium enterprises by the government ministries, regional authorities, organizations, enterprises, etc. were introduced. By sharing examples from participating nations, the goal was to draft solutions for selected problems each participant’s nation faced.