Established in 1988, the year designated by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) as the year of small business, the Guyana Small Business Association (GSBA) celebrates the 22nd year of its existence in a condition of uncertainty regarding its place in the constellation of local entities that lay claim to the promotion of the interests of the small business sector.
Unlike the Institute of Private Enterprise Development (IPED), for example, which provides both lending and training to sustain mostly micro rather than small business enterprises, and EMPRETEC, which focuses on a multi-faceted entrepreneurial training regime, the GSBA, currently, provides no discernable core services to the small business community and even Patrick Zephyr, the long-time head of the association does not disagree with the suggestion that the GSBA currently finds itself in a condition of dormancy.
During a recent interview with Stabroek Business Zephyr pointed to small projects undertaken by the association in Lusignan, Buxton and Friendship in the wake of the dislocations created in some East Coast communities following the crime wave of the earlier period of the decade. Zephyr says that apart from the GSBA’s focus on nurturing entrepreneurship in those communities, part of the objective of the exercise was to seek to restore fractured community relations by getting the villages to work together. The GSBA head also refers to a 5-module business training programme which he says the GSBA has provided and from which more than 500 people have benefited. Additionally, the GSBA claims credit for spearheading a 2007-2008 European Union-funded project to provide management and technical training to small entrepreneurs.
Plagued by financial and organizational deficiencies, however, the GSBA has been unable to provide a sustained high-quality service to the small business community and, as a consequence, has secured little if any real national recognition. Private sector functionaries have even argued that the title – small business association – is perhaps a misnomer since none of the mostly cottage enterprises that have found their way into the GSBA qualify as small businesses under the criteria set out in the Small Business Act. Zephyr says that the GSBA has around 2,000 registered members. But the association’s limited ability to maintain sustained communication with its members raises serious questions as to whether those numbers can still be deemed to be accurate or, indeed, whether many, perhaps most of them still exist. The question also arises as to whether some credit may accrue to Zephyr for his persistence in seeking to keep alive an organization that lays claim to making a major contribution to the original drafting of the current Small Business Act. The issue of restructuring the GSBA and redefining its role to take account of its greater suitability to promoting micro and cottage industry pursuits can no longer be avoided.
Currently, Zephyr sits on the Guyana Small Business Council, a body created under the Small Business Act and which is intended to be the highest organ in the structure envisaged under the act for the development of a local small business culture. Zephyr embraces the legislation but prefers to remain silent on what is widely regarded as the sloth in giving full effect to it. If he has a concern about the advent of the legislation, it is that the creation of the complete national small business infrastructure envisaged under the act could result in the eventual marginalization of already existing small business organizations, including the GSBA which currently appears uniquely vulnerable to extinction.
If, in its present seriously weakened state it is difficult to see what practical role the GSBA can play in the development of a strong small business culture, Zephyr insists on the relevancy of the association. He asserts, with much justification, that the tiny micro-businesses which the association has traditionally targeted are still largely fragmented and disorganized; a circumstance that restricts its access to support services including financing, training and marketing support. The question that arises out of his assertion, however, is whether, given the far flung nature of the local micro-business sector and the weaknesses of the GSBA, the association can effectively galvanize local small businesses under an umbrella that will bring them collective benefit.
For the moment at least, it appears that Zephyr’s seat on the Small Business Council provides a tenuous justification for the GSBA’s legitimacy, though how long that legitimacy can be sustained is decidedly questionable. Not surprisingly, therefore, the GSBA head says that he believes that part of the role of the Small Business Council ought to be to help build existing small business organizations. “Not much is being done to help strengthen the various small business organizations that have done much so far to help develop a small business culture,” Zephyr says, making no secret of the fact that the continuity of the GSBA itself may well depend on whatever support it can secure from the Small Business Council.
Zephyr concedes that the future of the GSBA will revolve around its capacity to sustain itself both structurally and financially in order to facilitate the provision of guidance, training and other forms of practical advice and counselling, to micro business operators. Such programmes require funding and that is where the GSBA continues to hit hurdles. The GSBA’s failure to sustain itself is directly linked to its inability to maintain a stable membership base with all that this implies in terms of the regular payment of the annual $6,000 membership fee. The GSBA’s lack of an independent financial base, resulting, some say, from disillusionment among members over issues of delivery of services, has meant that the organization has had to look elsewhere.
In the absence of funding through membership dues the GSBA has had to be satisfied with periodic funding from various international organizations, including, Zephyr says, USAID and the UNDP to sustain itself. Such funding is secured on the basis of project proposals for specific initiatives submitted by the GSBA and once the lives of the respective projects come to an end the Association is once again confronted with a battle for survival.
A lack of finances has been the bane of the GSBA’s existence. Since its inception it has occupied at least three separate offices. In each instance, those premises were funded by grants from international organizations. Understandably, the grants have not been indefinite.
That apart, its funding limitations have meant that it has been unable to create an adequate human resource base to provide those services that are part of its agenda.
Another challenge confronting the GSBA has been its failure, perhaps through lack of effort, to secure the embrace of the more influential private sector organizations – like the Private Sector Commission, the Guyana Manufacturers Association and the George-town Chamber of Commerce and Industry – a deficiency that has meant that it has been unable to secure the kind of support which those organizations can provide.
Zephyr says that the GSBA is currently engaging yet another un-named international organization and anticipates that “later this year” some funding should be come available to the organization.
The question that confronts the GSBA, however, is whether–given the increasing focus on the role of small and micro-business in job-creation and wealth-enhancement –- it can legitimately sustain itself as an organization given its questionable membership base and its virtual project-to-project existence. That, frankly, is not a question to which the GSBA head appeared to have a ready answer.
