Small business enterprises in Caribbean Community (CARICOM) territories will be offered an important opportunity to take their goods and services to a single regional marketplace when the first ever Caribbean Small Business Trade Fair and Exhibition is held in the twin-island republic from November 10- 17, this year.
Making the announcement in Georgetown on Monday President of the Small Enterprise Association of Trinidad and Tobago (SEBA) Jonathan Adams said that the initiative is consistent with the objectives of the CARICOM Single Market and that it seeks to provide regional small businesses with an opportunity to benefit from the provisions of the single market.
Addressing members of the Guyana Small Business Association (GSBA) at the Association’s Water-loo street secretariat Adams said that the fair and exhibition will also provide regional small businesses with an opportunity to create networking arrangements and to discuss possible joint venture initiatives that could redound to the simultaneous growth and development of small businesses in various sectors across the region. The inaugural regional small business event will take the form of a street fair and will be held on the popular Harris Promenade in San Fernando.
But even as the SEBA President travels across the Caribbean to secure region-wide support for the event some small business owners in Guyana have told Stabroek Business that their participation in the event would depend on whether or not they can secure support in financing the cost of air fares, hotel accommodation and the rental of display booths at the exhibition and fair. Adams said that SEBA was prepared to consider granting concessions to small business ventures run by young people – between the ages of 15 and 25 – who were otherwise unemployed and wishing to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the regional event.
Information on the event made available to Stabroek Business indicates that participants in the event will be charged TT$1500 (TT $1 = G $33) for a standard 10 x10 exhibition booth and TT$2,000 for a large (20 x10) exhibition booth. Small business owners wishing to participate in the event are required to make a downpayment of 50 per cent of the cost of the booth by October 20, and pay the remaining amount before November 5. Adams said that the fair and exhibition are designed to accommodate all goods and services produced by regional small businesses.
Asked whether he was prepared to approach government for support to facilitate local participation in the event President of the Guyana Small Business Association (GSBA) Patrick Zephyr told Stabroek Business that he was prepared to do so. In the past GO-INVEST has provided a measure of logistical support for Guyanese business houses participating in international fairs and exhibitions.
Representatives of local small businesses who attended last Monday’s forum are also to consider sharing booth space and accommodation and shipping costs in order to enable their participation in the event. Adams said that SEBA was anticipating around 15 representatives from each territory to participate in the event and to display their goods along the almost mile-long Harris Promenade.
The regional small business fair and exhibition could also resuscitate the relatively dormant Caribbean Small and Medium Enterprises (CASME) an organisation set up two years ago to facilitate networking among small business bodies in the region. Both Adams and Zephyr are members of the Board of Directors of CASME.
Adams told the GSBA members that SEBA was envisaging an annual regional small business fair and exhibition adding that regional small businesses could decide whether the event would be held in a different CARICOM territory each year or whether Trinidad and Tobago would be the permanent location for the event.
According to Adams SEBA has secured a position of influence in the twin-island Republic through careful planning and effective lobbying of government. He pointed out that while SEBA receives various forms of support from the Government in Port-of-Spain the organization had established a skills base and used that base to consolidate its independence. SEBA benefits from the Fair Shares Act, legislation in Trinidad and Tobago that allows for the allocation of a share of government contracts to small businesses. Additionally, SEBA itself is the beneficiary of training contracts from the government in Port-of-Spain.
According to Adams small businesses in several parts of the region continue to be affected by a scarcity of funding, a circumstance that had been rendered more difficult by the conditionalities imposed by the commercial banking system. Adams said that SEBA had moved to address this challenge by establishing a credit union through which members could secure funding for business-related ventures.
In his address at this year’s GuyExpo President Jagdeo said that access to funding was one of the major problems facing the business sector in Guyana, a point made several weeks ago by GO-INVEST Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey Da Silva at a small business forum organized by EMPRETEC.
Several months ago Zephyr told Stabroek Business that the GSBA announced that it was planning to establish a credit union.
Adams identified marketing as one of the major challenges facing small businesses in the region and said that SEBA had sought to respond to this challenge by incorporating marketing training and advice into the group of services that it offers its members. In urging the GSBA to seek to support its members in the marketing of its goods and services Adams said that it was unlikely that most small business operators were blessed with the skills to produce goods and services, administer businesses and market those goods and services effectively.
According to Adams the scale of the economic expansion currently underway in Trinidad and Tobago had attracted the interest of investors in several countries outside the region including India, China and Nigeria.
He told the GSBA gathering that other CARICOM states should seek to take advantage of the business opportunities currently available in the oil-rich Republic since the generation of intra-regional business initiatives was more likely to redound to the longer term benefit of Trinidad and Tobago and the region as a whole.
