The Power to Form Centres and Sub-Centres
Reviewing the situation when the Industrial Enterprise Development Centre was functioning as a Development Board, it was clear that its relationship with other centres and projects in its periphery had to be streamlined. This Act gives the Institute the power to form centres and sub-centres as well as branches and sub-branches to achieve its objectives.
The immediate impact of this is that the formerly loosely coordinated centres and projects now have an umbrella organization for coordination and exchange of experience. On the practical side it means that there are at the moment 4 organizations under the umbrella of the Institute. These are: the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) - in essence the former IEDC under the Development Board Act, the Small Business Promotion Project (SBPP), the Technology Transfer and Development Centre (TTDC) and the Technology Park Project (TPP). The provision for establishing centres also allows the Institute to carry out promotional activities for the industrial enterprise sector as a whole instead of confining itself to cottage and small enterprise promotion and providing linkage services for other required inputs. These new fields could involve; providing policy advice to the government, formulating strategies for industrial enterprise development, coordinating support activities in the sector and functioning as a think-tank on various aspects of industrial development.