The response by the country’s commercial banks to what was expected to be their robust collaboration with the Small Business Bureau (SBB) to enable greater access to lending for local small business development has failed to materialize, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the Bureau in pursuit of the fulfillment of its mandate, the agency’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Lowell Porter has told Stabroek Business.
Speaking with Stabroek Business during an extended interview last week, Porter said that it was also a matter of considerable disappointment that only one of the country’s indigenous banks has signed on to work with the Bureau to enhance access to funding for investment in small businesses. Porter also told Stabroek Business that he believed that government itself should further commit to ensuring the adequate financing of the Bureau’s projects.
The SBB was established under the Guyana’s Small Business Act (2004) to implement programmes and offer services to address constraints faced by small businesses including access to finance, the acquisition of business management and technical skills, the promotion of policies that foster small business development and the monitoring of small businesses’ access to the designated 20% of Government’s procurement of goods and services.