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