It is not the Stabroek Business’ impression that the recent engagement between President Irfaan Ali and representatives of the private sector would have taken full account of the particular concerns of micro and small businesses even though this does not necessarily suggest that there is not, somewhere in the pipeline, some plan that will unfold, sooner rather than later, for the President to engage, eyeball to eyeball (figuratively speaking, of course) with some representative group from the thousands of small businesses across the country, many if not most of which share common problems that require common solutions.
One makes this point against the backdrop of what we have said, repeatedly, has been the lack of effective representation that micro and small businesses have had to endure when it comes to being able to share their concerns with the powers that be and secure hard and fast commitments with regard to remedying those problems.
Here we pause to note the fact that the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) has been the standout exception to a general rule of what certainly appears to be an indifference on the part of Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) to micro and small business development, a matter on which we have commented in the recent immediate past. Quite apart from the work that it has done in pursuit of local and international product promotion on behalf of the local agro processing sector, particularly, we note as well this latest web portal initiative spearheaded by the GMSA that will provide support for small businesses in the various sectors in their product promotion pursuits, an area in which they are badly lacking.
As an aside, much of the interest of our local BSO’s – and rightly so, many would argue – has been in the local content-related spinoffs that are to be derived from the country’s oil and gas eventuality, though ones wonders whether it might not be justifiable to say that the more parochial business-related matters including, of course, the development of the micro and small business sector, might not have been, ill-advisedly, left somewhat behind in the clamour to seek to secure the bigger prize.
The Stabroek Business had made the point much earlier that the primary problem which the Small Business Bureau continues to face is the reality of ambitions that are not matched by the resources with which to realize those. The demands on the SBB one imagines, would almost certainly have become much greater in recent times on account of, first, the advent of COVID-19 which has literally unleashed a tsunami of what, in thousands of instances, are survival-related challenges on the micro and small business sector which the SBB, whatever the extent of its willingness, lacks the capacity to address effectively.
Perhaps the best way of putting this is to state simply that one of the best ways through which government can respond to the crisis that now afflicts large swathes of the micro and small business sector is to invest considerably more material resources into the SBB’s operations and, simultaneously, build capacity within the Bureau in order to enable it not just to significantly extend its reach but also to respond to the individual challenges facing micro and small businesses in a fashion that speaks to the sustainability of these entities. The importance of micro and small businesses to the wider development of the country’s economy requires an immediate significantly upgraded empowering of the SBB insofar as its role in financing micro and small businesses and providing training to business owners is concerned.
At its inception we were told that the SBB was concerned with targeting meaningful growth and job-creation for those micro and small businesses that has found a place under its umbrella. It would be good for us to, at the stage, be able to gauge the extent to which these objectives have been realized by way of some kind of public notification. That is the only way in which we are going to, if need be, refine its agenda in order to ensure that national expectations in relation to its set agenda are being met.
All of this is simply to say that there is need for a far more generous measure of evidence that micro and small businesses are suitably credentialed as a bona fide part of the Guyana Business community. Structured and serious engagements between those micro and small business owners and the President and the various other influencing-wielding personages within the political administration, , like those enjoyed periodically by the well-placed BSO’s, will go a far way towards providing that assurance.
