The long-awaited reports on the work of the Small Business Bureau (SBB) for the years 2015 and 2016 “should be ready for publishing next week” though an official assessment of the performance of the entity launched in 2013 suggests that it has experienced mixed fortunes over the period of its existence.
While the Bureau had originally set itself a target of creating 2,200 jobs over two years, ending in March 2016, Stabroek Business has been informed that that target had been reduced. “That target had been adjusted downwards though we have never been told what either the new target or the new time frame was,” the Bureau’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Lowell Porter said in responding to questions put to him by the Stabroek Business.
In a response which appeared, in part, to seek to account for the reduction in the job-creation target Porter told Stabroek Business that the project had been, in the first instance, an extremely ambitious one. “For Guyana it was unrealistic to create that much jobs within a two-year time frame. He said that the grant programme component of the Bureau’s activities had created 426 jobs whilst the loan programme had “preserved” 325 jobs and created a further 255 “potential jobs.” A total of more than 1000 jobs were preserved, created and potentially created which surpassed the reduced target, Porter said.