It may have come as a surprise to some of the representatives of the mainstream private sector when representatives of the small business sector put in an appearance at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on Monday to further make a case for far greater attention to be paid to their growth needs in order to better position them to, among other things, benefit from some of the promised spinoffs from the oil & gas sector and to otherwise consolidate their operations.
We say without apology to any other media house that this newspaper has, for many months, been singular in its insistence that the state, the banking sector, and certainly the country’s high profile Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) have displayed a posture of profound indifference to the growth needs of micro and small businesses, particularly. More recently and against the backdrop of the advent of COVID-19, the pittance that had been afforded as a grant by the state through the Small Business Bureau has been meagre enough to cause some of the traditionally structurally weaker businesses to literally die on their feet. We know because we have been engaging some of the hapless proprietors. Indeed, even this year’s budgetary allocation for small business growth and development is, comparatively speaking, nothing to write home about.
Further, it is no secret that our commercial banks – most of them, that is – have maintained a posture of indifference, sometimes even arrogance, in the face of the plight of small businesses. As for the BSO’s, more often than not, it seems that their singular preoccupation is with the Local Content ‘spoils’ to be derived from the foreign investment attention arising out of the country’s oil & gas pursuits. Here, we cite as a partial exception, the limited efforts that have been made by the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) to raise the profile of the challenges confronting micro and small businesses.
We have argued prior to now that the real plight of micro and small businesses reposes in the fact that they have been continually denied an independent seat at the table, so to speak, insofar as engaging with government is concerned. In recent times it has been the GMSA, mostly, that has been tagging some of the concerns of micro and small businesses onto its own agenda during its engagements with central government. That, manifestly, has not been enough.
Perhaps the biggest recent blow to the well-being of small businesses up until now occurred last year, arising out of the problems associated with the full and effective implementation of the 20% allocation of state contracts to small businesses, a prerogative provided for in the Small Business Act.
Whatever the reason for this (and we believe that much of it was due to the government’s failure to seize the moment) it ought not to have happened and at this time it is decidedly unclear as to when this provision on the Act will be fully implemented even with the passage of the recent amendment by Parliament.
Thoroughly and transparently implemented, the 20% concession can help reduce the syndrome of dependency that obtains insofar as the survival of businesses in the micro- and small-businesses sector is concerned.
While government never ceases to ‘crow’ about the importance of empowering women it has not, over time – at least so it seems – occurred to them that women comprise a sizeable proportion of local small business owners. When one adds to that number the amount of additional dependents, then the case for significantly stepping support for small businesses becomes stronger.
The most that can be said for the ‘invasion’ by the small business sector of the Local Content forum is that it allowed room for the forum to go beyond the mechanics of Local Content, venturing into how, perhaps, provision might be made for a more equitable sharing of the spoils. At the same time it should be noted that the discourse ensued in the presence of the President of the Republic.
What we have to wait to see is whether the small business discourse was simply an extension of the customary ‘talk shops’ that ensue on occasions like Monday’s Local Content forum (which, of course, cannot be ruled out) or whether this may be a sort of ‘jump start’ that moves the process of paying greater attention to the growth of the small business sector in a new direction. We will have to wait and see.
