Guyana’s small business sector can perhaps best be compared with an undernourished child that simply refuses to roll over and die even though the prospects for its growth and development and survival to a ripe old age are far from readily apparent. Indeed, we appear not to even have arrived at a clear definition of what constitutes a small business, a circumstance that has left us with a loose definition that embraces anything ranging from a home-based initiative out of which small quantities of products like pickles, pepper, decorative and ornamental craft emerge to makeshift eating houses and hairdressing salons.
Mind you, the level of attention that has been paid to small businesses in Guyana is yet to take account of the fact that such businesses remain the most significant source of employment not only in Guyana but in much of the Caribbean and Latin America. That notwithstanding, there continues to be few if any robust public policies to support the growth of the small business sector in Guyana.
Part of the problem with many local small business enterprises is that many of them have their origins in hastily conceived options to unemployment which means that they lack any real basis in the kind of planning that ought correctly to attend the creation of a conventional business. That, of course, is a huge handicap since their growth and sustainability can hardly be assured in the absence of an infusion of orthodoxies like business plans, strict accounting regimes and marketing strategies that usually associated with business enterprises. More than that, the success of businesses, whatever their size, usually depends heavily on shrewd management. Many small business owners have no management skills whatsoever. In the face of all these deficiencies life becomes a matter of subsistence rather than success for many small businesses, hence the reasons why some disappear as quickly as they had appeared in the first place.
Evidence of a small business ‘culture’ in Guyana usually reflects itself mostly in the congregation of small producers of craft, clothing and food condiments at events like GUYEXPO. While, taken together, they may well be perceived as representing a vibrant small business sector, they are, in effect, mostly one-off, ‘show window’ initiatives designed to take advantage of a rare captive market. Once you trouble yourself to engage many of the really small exhibitors you discover, frequently, chronic weaknesses in their operations that preclude them from being able to fill orders for more than modest volumes of whatever the product that they might be offering and even in some of those cases where they manage to do so, the consistency of the quality of their product is an issue. These impediments, of course, have their origin in inherent structural weaknesses ranging from a lack of financial and technical resources to managerial know-how.
Local lending agencies, perhaps with a few exceptions, lack the level of confidence in ventures that are sometimes unsupported be even a coherent business plan so that in seeking financing for such ventures many loan seekers fail the basic test of measured risk though it has to be said that in recent years commercial banks have appeared somewhat more responsive to the need to provide lending support for small business projects. Here, the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry’s (GBTI) Women of Worth (WOW) initiative as well as other small business lending products advertised by Republic Bank, Scotia and others come to mind.
On the whole, however, the small business sector remains out in the cold – so to speak – and one of the primary reasons for this perhaps the primary reason for this has to do with official failure to recognize the role which small business enterprises can play in job-creation. This newspaper has, for example, has incessantly bemoaned the fact that the provisions of the Small Business Act, passed in the National Assembly some seven years ago and intended to offer the kinds of support which that are ideally needed if the small business sector is to overcome its current condition of undernourishment are yet to see the light of day. Indeed, the existence of enabling legislation to allow for state and non-state support for small businesses appears to have been all but forgotten amidst the various other more grandiose items on the government’s economic agenda.
This anomaly fails to take account of the fact that a strengthened small business sector can actually help compensate for the inability of the economy to generate sufficient jobs to meet the national needs as well as sustain potentially existing sub-sectors of the economy and create new ones which are otherwise unlikely to see the light of day.
What the disparate and far-flung nature of local small business enterprises has also meant it that the emergence of an independent organization designed to promote small business interests has been difficult to realize. Nor has much help in this regard been coming from the established business umbrella organizations despite the fact that they are ideally positioned to provide that help. Here, it has to be said that the notable exception has been the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) which, in recent years, has been partnering with support organizations to provide training in some key facets of small business management for business owners.
It may well be that the recent change in the leadership of the country might eventually bring a measure of change to the political administration’s perspective on the small business sector, though, curiously, the status of the Ministry under which responsibility for administering the provisions of the Small Business Act, (The Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Consumer Protection) appears to be in limbo. What will not be acceptable is if the present official posture persists and the small business sector continues to more-or-less fend for itself without either the compass of official guidance or the nourishment of various forms of practical help which can only come from hastening the practical implementation of the support provisions enshrined in the Small Business Act.
