For a period of time, extending, perhaps over several two decades, Guyanese have been actively debating (and in some instances, pursuing) options for self-employment, some of which have embraced niches in the agricultural, agro-processing, craft, beauty, retail and services sectors that can serve as alternative stable and long-term income-generating options. Arguably, the consideration that influenced this preoccupation most was the incremental loss of appetite for employment in the public sector where, it finally began to dawn on Guyanese, that, at least on the lower rungs of the Public Service ladder, keeping body and soul together (as we say in Guyana) had become a considerable stretch, given the paucity of the emoluments paid by the state.
The pursuit of options outside the formal sectors have also been open to persons still in formal (public sector) employment but on the lookout for income subsidies elsewhere. In effect, what micro and small businesses in the non-traditional sectors have done is to create new income streams not just for persons directly employed in the sectors but also for persons seeking a starting point for their lives as earners.
Here it is important to state that over the years, government has never fully actively supported this trend. Much of its response was at the level of lip service. It never sought to make a serious investment in seeking to transform the inclination for self-employment into a substantive economic option. Indeed, arguably, up to this day, government is yet to demonstrate a really wholehearted appetite for giving its full backing to the emergence of a robust micro and small business sector.
Guyanese have persisted with this option, largely on their own. It has been a success insofar as it has provided substantive, optional and/or additional employment for significant numbers of Guyanese, across the country, so much so that new and thriving sectors have now mushroomed, the goods and services that they have yielded attracting markets beyond the domestic one and daring the proprietors to seize far more lucrative opportunities than they had originally anticipated by growing further through tactful investment. In other words, we have something to show for it.
Arguably the single biggest challenge that continues to confront those small investors who have seen the light as far as possible entrepreneurial breakthrough is concerned has been the dichotomy between the opportunities which they, by their own effort, have created, on the one hand and, on the other, the inability to further those initial breakthroughs on account of the limited resources with which to do so. It is here that the reality of government’s failure to ‘chip in,’ meaningfully, that is, becomes most apparent, whatever arguments they have made to the contrary. The fact is that the state has always failed to sufficiently acknowledge the multi-faceted role that various types of micro and small businesses play in the social and economic life of the country, preferring, seemingly, to see support for micro and small businesses as a form of political aggrandizement. This is why what little state resources are allocated to micro and small businesses is often the subject of controversy.
While government has customarily responded to this charge by trotting out numbers pertaining to allocations for the micro and small business sectors, it completely ignores the fact that the sums allocated are altogether inadequate to sustain a vibrant micro/small businesses sector. Equally important is the fact that these modest allocations are rarely if ever attended by the creation of much of the supporting infrastructure necessary to sustain those (small and micro) enterprises.
In the area of food production (particularly agro-processing) for example efforts by business owners to consolidate their enterprises whilst simultaneously seeking to access markets both in the region and further afield, has, historically, lacked any robust official support, a circumstance that has retarded the ability of the manufacturing/agro processing sector to secure any serious grip on potentially lucrative international markets. One can point to the recent example of the government’s blunt refusal to provide a modest subsidy (to allow for local representation at a product promotion event in the United States) for micro and small businesses in (mostly) the agro-processing sector in circumstances where on feels that the public treasury can handle that kind of investment at this time.
Government, it sometimes seems, has missed the bus in terms of what, all too frequently, is the need to recognize the importance of devising/supporting simple strategies that can pay rich dividends in terms of both social cohesion and economic empowerment.
What, over time, appears to have been lacking is a strong social pact between government and small businesses that creates channels through which the two can communicate effectively. This raises the question as to whether government is prepared to be accommodating of the emergence of a micro and small business body that can enjoy a level of access to decision-makers at the level of the state, comparable to that enjoyed by the traditional Business Support Organizations. There remains a discomfiting distance between the country’s numerous micro and small businesses seeking official support for the growth of their emerging enterprises and government, bedecked as it is with what, sometimes, is a bewildering array of tiers of authority, most of which appear to exist for no other reason than to bar the way to the real decision-makers.
Contextually, it is apposite to draw attention to the recent decidedly upbeat assessment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of the envisaged short to medium-term direction of the Guyana economy. There are those who may well regard the IMF’s prognosis as creating a danger that the exalted ambitions of government may result in the creation of an even wider distance between the state and micro and small businesses. Outside of lofty investments in grandiose, eye-catching projects that include ambitious big money undertakings powered by foreign investments, there will still remain the need for equally ambitious poverty alleviation undertakings. Here, one cannot be unmindful of the fact that there are examples elsewhere where, amidst the plenty that has arisen out of infusions of unexpected wealth, the poor and the powerless have been left behind.
It is the capacity of micro and small businesses to grow and to allow for a far more equitable sharing of the returns from the country’s recently acquired significant economic asset that is at the center of this comment. Insofar as resources are concerned it is government that holds the levers of power and it is government that has the responsibility to use it wisely. There is, one feels, a great deal of wisdom in targeting for the fullest official support, individuals and groups across the country, including the country’s indigenous people, who have worked to create and grow small businesses from ground up and which derive from a desire for personal growth, the need to get ahead that are most in need of robust official support.
Such a course of action will not only change the economic face of the country by accommodating significantly larger numbers of Guyanese as meaningful income earners, but will also move the country closer to a condition of social cohesion, a condition that has eluded us for all of our existence.
It is government, first, that must make the call here.
