Entrepreneurship: Did the government get it right?

The past administration was able to release its target of P310B worth of loans to M/SMEs--at least according to their press release.  In the 2004-2010 MTDPD and SMEDP, the expectation is that this amount will be able to help about 3 million entrepreneurs (mostly start-ups as there are less than 1 million registered micro, small and medium sized enterprises) who are then expected to consequently generate 10 million jobs.  Reading the numbers, the arithmetic seems quite simple--1 entrepreneur who will be assisted with loans will be able to provide about 3 to 4 jobs each.

(But if they targetted to assist about 3 million entrepreneurs, and assuming that there is less than 1 million enterprises (as of NSO statistic there are just about 800,000 to 900,000 firms in the Philippines, with M/SMEs comprising 99.7%) in the Philippines, were they really able to create 2 million nascent enterprises?  Or did they include lending to unregistered firms through wholesale tie-ups with MFIs, et. al.?) 

However, the actual count of jobs generated from the program was just about 1/3 of the target--also according to government press releases.  If they are not mistaken, this means that either the targets that the government set for itself were too high, or that something went terribly wrong.

(Is there existing data regarding the GVA that M/SMEs were able to contribute during the period?)

Recent data from the global entrepreneurship monitor (GEM), a consortium of academic institutions monitoring entrepreneurship around the world, will suggest that the targets were set too high.  Entrepreneurship simply do not have the capability to provide those numbers in a very short period of time.  As per GEM statistics, of nascent entrepreneurs in developing countries in Asia, only 3% of enterprises can actually provide about 5 jobs and 90% can only provide 1 < 5 jobs.

While I have reasons to believe that the findings of GEM can explain the shortfall (and thus should guide future policy interventions for entrepreneurship development and what to expect from it), this does not mean that nothing went terribly wrong, too.