The Small Business Bureau (SBB) could begin disbursements of grants of up to $300,000 each for start-up small business projects and re-tooling of existing ones as early as next month under the Low Carbon Micro and Small Enterprise Development Project (LCMSEDP), Stabroek Business has learnt.
Moves to trigger the hastening of grants to small business applicants have come in the wake of a recent meeting of the project’s Grants Committee under the chairmanship of Head of the Small Business Council Sukrishnalall Pasha.
Stabroek Business has been informed that the purpose of the meeting was to finalise the procedures governing the allocation of grants and that an operations manual to guide the disbursement of the grants could be ready in a week.
Grants are one of five components of the micro and small enterprise project; the other four being collateral guarantees for commercial bank loans, interest subsidies, technical skills training and business management skills training.
The grants are set aside for small business owners and potential owners who do not qualify for commercial bank lending because of perceived risks. They are to be disbursed directly from a US$5 million allocation made to the SBB from funding secured from Norway under the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) project.
Chief Executive Officer of the SBB Derrick Cummings told Stabroek Business earlier this week that potential beneficiaries of the grant scheme will also benefit from training associated with affording small business owners the best possible opportunity to secure positive results.
Part of the criteria for accessing a grant is that applicants must submit a business plan for consideration. The SBB is currently funding training programmes for potential beneficiaries that will equip them with the know-how to prepare business plans. Cummings said that as part of the procedure associated with accessing grants, the SBB will itself be executing due diligence procedures to ensure that grants are allocated to eligible persons.
Meanwhile, Stabroek Business has learnt that commercial bank loans are yet to be made under the collateral guarantees component of the project though Cummings said the Bureau was satisfied that the process of engagement between the potential loan beneficiaries and commercial banks was “going smoothly.”
Under the collateral guarantee scheme, borrowers from commercial banks will benefit from an SBB guarantee of up to 40 per cent of the collateral requirements of the banks, a maximum of $12 million.