When former Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin announced late last year that the 20 per cent ‘set aside’ provision that would allow small businesses to secure access to various types of state contracts worth up to $30 million would come on stream from January this year, the announcement, it seemed at the time, had come more out of a sense of unbridled optimism than against the background of any real certainty that that deadline could actually be met. Apart from the fact that it transpired that there were still some important legislative hurdles to cross before the ‘set aside’ provision could come into effect, another of the stumbling blocks to meeting the deadline was that small businesses wishing to benefit from state contracts under the ‘set aside’ arrangement would have had to register as contributors to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS).
Leaving aside the procedural requirements associated with signing on to the NIS, many of the small businesses, which, in theory at least, might have qualified for state contracts, were not even properly registered as bona fide businesses, notwithstanding the support that had been forthcoming from the Small Business Bureau. Indeed, a point had been reached where, if the arrangement was to come on stream in January this year, as former Minister Gaskin had promised, it would have been necessary for the state agencies concerned, including the NIS, the Ministry of Business and the Small Business Bureau to create a special ‘fast track’ window to meet the January 2019 timeline. That never happened.
In fact, while it seemed that former Minister Gaskin had provided the timeline disclosure with the very best of intentions and while the Head of the Small Business Bureau, Dr. Lowell Porter, appeared pretty ‘fired up’ about meeting the January timeline, it was clear well before the end of the year that it wouldn’t happen.
Now that that timeline has passed and gone, there has been, as far as the Stabroek Business is aware, no recent update on when the mechanism will begin to work. It is against this backdrop and what we regard as the critical importance of the potential that reposes in the ‘set aside’ provision for significant employment generation and for the energising of the small business sector that we raise this issue. Everything that we have been told by the handful of small businesses with which we have spoken so far suggests that failure to implement the ‘set aside’ provision has been a considerable disappointment.
The Small Business Act in which the ‘set aside’ arrangement is enshrined has been in place for just over fifteen years. On paper it is certainly a noteworthy piece of legislation since what it seeks to do is to, among other things, create new levels of employment opportunities with the state sector for businesses that would not otherwise have qualified on account of their size. What the successful implementation of the ‘set aside’ arrangement will do is not just to create potentially significant numbers of additional jobs across the various sectors but also to trigger investments in business growth in order to better position small businesses to benefit from the provision.
When the provision was first promulgated, small business owners in several sectors responded with considerable enthusiasm. That enthusiasm would appear to have waned though there is no reason to think that full and effective implementation is not still on government’s agenda. In circumstances of high unemployment and small businesses being threatened on account of a scarcity of meaningful contracts, it makes every sense to significantly fast track the preliminary requirements so that the 20% ‘set aside’ arrangement can be implemented as a matter of priority and in the shortest possible time.
