Annabelle Carter-Sharma is one of several entrepreneurial aspirants whose ambitions are now much better positioned to take shape, following her receipt in May of a $3 million loan from the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) to consolidate Euphoria Indoor and Outdoor Fun Park an enterprise which, though already registered as a business is still very much in the making.
Carter-Sharma’s loan was facilitated largely through a recommendation from the Small Business Bureau (SBB) a state-established facility, which, equipped with a US$5 million tranche from the Norway-financed GRIF fund is positioned to both allocate grants to some categories of small businesses and business aspirants and to collaterize loan requests made to local commercial banks by small business borrowers.
Allowing for what, invariably, is the tedium associated with engaging commercial banks on certain issues Carter-Sharma, a trained architect, is altogether happy with the outcome. It might have taken several months between November last year when she first engaged the Bureau to the eventual approval of the loan in May this year but as far as she is concerned all’s well that ends well.
It is the kind of assessment of the process which the Bureau itself welcomes. For much of this year it has come under considerable criticism from what some seekers after its services consider to be excessive sloth. This week, the Bureau’s Chief Executive Officer Derrick Cummings again defended the organization, pointing out that in the case of borrowers from commercial banks, the imprimatur of the Bureau does not exempt borrowers from the customary requirements of the bank. “Because lending institutions are by nature deliberate and careful it is not unusual for some processes to be slow,” Cummings says.
For Carter-Sharma, a mother of two sons and
managing director of an emerging enterprise, however, the procedural part is behind her and she has already immersed herself in the process of building on what she has already accomplished. The backbone of her fun park is a collection of the highly popular inflatables which, these days, form part of every fun fair. At this year’s GuyExpo Carter-Sharma successfully provided lively entertainment and even as she keeps an eye out for an open space on the East Bank Demerara. She has rented space at the Sophia site where her inflatables will be available twice a month for children to have a time of their lives.
