The Small Business Development Corporation’s 2024-25 Annual Report was tabled in the WA Parliament this week.
After five months at the helm of the SBDC, I can say that it is a great privilege to lead an organisation with a great reputation for delivering practical, expert support to Western Australia’s hard working small businesses.
In the 2024-25 year we delivered impactful assistance to our customers, the small businesses of Western Australia, including:
- Launching our new regional delivery service, SBDC Regional, across all regions of the state, and delivering more than 9,000 hours of local business advice to regional small business owners.
- Responding to more than 8,200 enquiries from business owners with direct, personalised and confidential information on a wide range of business topics to help them deal with challenges and maximise opportunities.
- Delivering the three-month intensive Propel your Business coaching program for 108 growth-focused WA business owners, as part of more than 10,000 hours of practical workshop delivery.
- Commencing our Small Business Friendly Government Approvals Program, working with State Government partners to help streamline approval processes and drive economic growth for small businesses and the state.
- Finalising more than 360 disputes, including several commercial tenancy matters, involving small businesses through our free dispute resolution service.
- Continuing to work closely with our 55 local government partners in the Small Business Friendly Local Governments alliance to deliver information and services into local government areas.
- Reaching nearly 3,000 people through our outreach services and speaking opportunities, to spread to word about services to support small businesses.
- Welcoming more than 85,000 visitors to our website and 25,000 to our social media channels.
- Realising a $427.4 million boost to the WA economy from business migrants.
- Achieving 90 per cent satisfaction and recommendation ratings for our services, with 97 per cent of clients saying that the information or guidance we provided was useful.
These are just some of the highlights over a very busy year.
It would have been impossible to deliver this level of impact without the hard work and passion of our extremely dedicated executive and team including my predecessor David Eaton PSM; the guidance of current and former Board Chairs Sharni Foulkes and Grant Cucel and the SBDC Board; and the support of our Minister for Small Business, Hon Jackie Jarvis MLC.
Read the Small Business Development Corporation’s 2024-25 annual report.
Saj Abdoolakhan
Small Business Commissioner
