Immigrant entrepreneurship in the West Midlands 2022

In March, ACH and the OECD held a workshop to discuss immigrant and refugee entrepreneurship support using the Better Entrepreneurship Policy Tool. 12 people representing NGOs (9), HEIs (2) and other (1) completed the self-assessment quiz. The results showed a relatively low score (under 5/10), suggesting participants feel that there are a number of gaps in the current suite of support available to immigrants seeking to start businesses. “Regulations” and “Finance” were ranked the lowest whilst “Strategies” and “Skills” had the highest score. The questions which received the weakest score (in other words, the biggest perceived bottlenecks) are: • Business start-up regulations and procedures pose undue difficulties for migrant entrepreneurs. • The current suite of business development and growth financing offers is not appropriate for various profiles of migrants. • Entrepreneurship coaching and mentoring offered for migrants is not as effective that it should be. All the questions related to monitoring and evaluation got a poor score. Participants identified priorities for actions and next steps. You can read the full summary on the ACH website here: https://ach.org.uk/news-and-features/better-entrepreneurship-policy-tool-ach-and-oecd-workshop OECD contact: cynthia.lavison@oecd.org