Resilient Businesses and the Pandemic: Unlocking Opportunities to Build a Better Normal: Towards Gender- Responsive and Resilient Micro-, Small, and Medium Enterprises in the Food Manufacturing and Processing Sector in the Philippines

Lockdown containment measures pushed micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) into a vicious cycle of constrained resources that creates greater uncertainty while delaying their path to recovery. Yet, there are emerging opportunities to build a better normal, which the United Nations Industry Development Organization (UNIDO), United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and the International Labour Organization (ILO) explored in the research on Unlocking Opportunities to Build a Better Normal: Towards Gender-Responsive and Resilient Micro-, Small and Medium Enterprises in the Food Manufacturing and Processing Sector in the Philippines.

This policy brief highlights strategic ways to unlock opportunities for MSMEs, capitalizing on various joint efforts towards recovering from the pandemic, rebuilding towards a better normal and promoting the creation of gender-inclusive, greener industries and decent jobs in the process.

These strategies will also inform the implementation of the United Nations’ updated Cooperation Framework with the Philippines—the Socioeconomic and Peacebuilding Framework for COVID-19 Recovery in the Philippines (SEPF). The SEPF, which was endorsed by the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in 2020, is the UN Philippines's blueprint for supporting the country to recover from the pandemic, while keeping the country on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in a manner that leaves no one behind.