It is now just over a year since the Small Business Procurement Programme, provided for under Section 11:1 of the Small Business Act of 2004 was scheduled to come into effect. The Programme made provision for approved small businesses to access at least 20 per cent of procurement contracts for goods and services required by the state. The preparatory process stipulated certain qualifying criteria including NIS and GRA compliance. The Small Business Bureau was assigned to facilitate the arrangement by preparing a Small Business Procurement Programme.
Setting these prerequisites aside that there needed to be some measure of prior parliamentary intervention to secure amendment to both the Procurement Act and the Small Business Act in order to ensure that they properly complemented each other, what was also determined was that many (perhaps most) businesses deemed to be small businesses were not NIS and GRA compliant and therefore did not qualify for access to contracts under the provisions set out in the Act. In effect, what had initially been envisaged as a potential game-changer insofar as the fortunes of the small business sector were concerned appeared to have run aground, or also least become subject to delay on account of being assailed by unfavourable winds.
Beyond the structural/systemic concerns there were others some of which had to do with ensuring that the modus operandi put in place afforded the broadest possible access to contracts in a more or less fair and transparent manner since it is no secret that arrangements of this kind can sometimes become shockingly corrupted. There was also the need to ensure that those small businesses seeking to ‘step up’ to the level of executing contracts paid for by the taxpayers were suitably equipped to do so and had not been simply shoved in through some clandestine ‘back door’ means.
By way of ‘cutting to the chase’ it should be said that the announcement that there would have been full and effective implementation from January 2019 was decidedly precipitate. since, upon reflection, Neither the legal mechanisms nor the satisfying of criteria by the small business aspirants to state contracts had been fully expedited; so that here we are at the beginning of 2020 with a provision in the Small Business Act which, arguably, affords the most important opportunity ever for the growth of the small business sector, but which remains unimplemented up to this time.
Mind you, it has to be said that the period of political distraction that followed the outcome of the no confidence motion towards the end of 2018 did serve to dilute the sense of focus that would have been necessary to properly expedite the effective implementation of the small business 20% state contract allocation regime..
It is now safe to assume that this matter is unlikely to secure official sanction before the holding of general elections though what is important at this stage is that after general elections have come and gone it not suffer the fate of being crowded out by other matters deemed to be of greater urgency. One makes this point bearing in mind that, first, the effective implementation the Small Business Procurement Programme can help to galvanize small businesses into ‘raising their game’ in order to meet the qualifying criteria; secondly, once contracts begin to be allocated under the provisions of the programme it will have an immediate positive impact on employment levels. There are other important considerations here but the importance of these two can hardly be overstated.
The transparency of the system will, of course, be an important issue too. As far as possible, it will be important, first, that once the system is fully implemented there be no ‘external’ intervention that insists on arbitrary and unlawful adjustment to the rules for one questionable reason or another. More than that, where the qualifications criteria are manifestly met selection should, as far as is practically possible, favour small businesses drawn from the communities in which the projects are being executed. Such an approach has, arguably, the best chance of impacting immediately on employment levels in those communities.
One expects too, that once the ‘green light’ is secured for the full and effective implementation of the provisions of the Small Business Act, allowing small businesses access to state contract allocation, our local commercial banks will act expeditiously to ensure that their lending postures take account of that consideration. With due recognition of the preeminence of their accountability to their shareholders, the inward-looking policies of the commercial banking sector, not least, what is often their unwillingness to look at the country’s bigger developmental picture, in terms of their ‘policy’ on small business lending, is a block to the developmental direction in which we seek to take our country.
As has already been mentioned the Small Business Procurement Programme is one of those initiatives that could become compromised by greed, nepotism, conspiracy to cut corners and a host of other undesirable practices. In this regard it should be said that the greatest care has to be taken to ensure that the facility does not become a ‘gift horse’ for functionaries who wield influence. There should, therefore, be no shortage of carefully prepared rules governing selection criteria.
It is in the nature of government that game-changing processes take ages to fructify, a circumstance that inevitably attracts public criticism, frustration and the dismissal of what are intended to be useful initiatives as ‘false promises.’ The reality is that that the Small Business 20% Procurement Provision can, in fact, be an important game-changer insofar as both raising competence levels in the private sector and ‘bumping up’ our employment levels are concerned, so that once we get past the process and outcomes of the March 2 polls, the process towards the earliest implementation of the provision should begin without delay.
