As it endeavours to assist its over 300 members to attain the requisite compliances and so tap into procurement opportunities in both the public and private sectors, the Black Entrepreneurs Association (BEA) of Guyana will be meeting with a number of ministries and business organisations in the first quarter of this year.
Already, the organisation has met with the Ministry of Public Works and says that after the debate and passage of the 2023 Budget, it plans to reach out to other ministries and agencies of government.
“Yesterday [Thursday] we met with the Ministry of Public Works…we had a really good meeting with Minister [Juan] Edghill. Our 2022 goal was to help our members to be compliant and business ready, and working with our membership, so that they can venture out into getting contracts and partnerships and so forth,” BEA Executive and spokesperson, Melissa Varswyk, told Stabroek News in an interview.
She explained that since the body’s formation in 2020, they have over 300 members and of those, over 85 per cent are compliant with regulatory requirements for their respective businesses, especially geared for the oil and gas services. “Our members have their NIS, they have their GRA, their bank accounts and business licences and things like that. A sizeable amount already have their Local Content Certificate.”
The BEA currently has 300 registered members in Guyana and 300 in the UK chapter.
When it met with President Irfaan Ali in 2021, the association highlighted that it is committed to creating a blueprint for black-owned businesses, which creates inter-generational wealth while transforming the business economy and community.
After its formation, and realising that the main gripe of black-owned businesses was that they were not getting contracts, or were not able to form partnerships and get access to financing, the BEA set out its plan which prioritised equipping its members.
The BEA has set down a number of overall goals and targets for the organisation and has further divided them into long and short term goals.
“It is a continuous process but in 2021 we had training and workshops and so forth where we taught our membership various things. Help to equip them with the knowledge so that they can venture out to get contracts and partnerships and secure grants and so forth,” Varswyk explained.
Holding hands with the many start-up, small- and medium-sized businesses, Varswyk said now that they are compliant, the body wants them to learn firsthand what is required from public and private sector bodies for procurement.
“We want to help them to scale their businesses, finding finance and marketing and public relations et cetera. We want to see how they do and help them go through a procurement process, bid correctly, and get contracts. This is not only agencies of government and ministries but also with the private sector. We want to tap into the private sector arena where there is the oil and gas and so forth.”
“So we will be reaching out to meet more ministries and agencies throughout the months. We know it is budget period but after that we will continue with more ministries, reaching out to get more insight into their procurement and hear what are the opportunities there,” she added.
The Ministry of Public Works was one of the first ministries that was contacted by the BEA, since it holds the lion’s share of capital projects. Varsawyk said that on Wednesday a request was sent to the ministry and they got a swift reply informing them that the Minister would meet with them on Thursday if they were available.
She disclosed that at that meeting, it was explained early on that the association was not there to complain about not getting contracts, but to find out from the ministry how it may access contracts and what were the processes and documentation needed.
Pitfalls
“It was not about complaining. We need to stop the complaining aspect of things and just be persistent and go after our goals. That is the approach we are taking. We did not go there to complain or anything like that. We said ‘we have challenges in getting contracts, a lot of them are new to the space and want to get into the procurement aspect of thing. So what is it that the ministry is offering, in terms of procurement [and] what is that like here? What are the pitfalls that relates to people not being qualified? And questions like that,” she noted.
Minister of Public Works Edghill came in for high praise from the BEA. The attendees noted that he went through “the pains” of pointing out some of the “dos and don’ts and pitfalls” so as to prevent the small businesses from “falling through on the bidding.”
Edghill, she said, promised to have a follow up with the group, where he will make the ministry’s procurement team accessible to them and conduct a training session. “After the budget debate, contractors will have a training session with the procurement team there and go through the processes. They will learn how to fill out the different forms and how to apply during the pre-qualification processes and things like that.”
The Ministry had publicised that it had had a courtesy visit from some members of the Black Entrepreneurs Association. “The visiting group of mainly businessmen and women, contractors, and engineers, are interested in bidding for Government contracts in the area of Infrastructure. The group sought audience with the Minister to discuss opportunities under the Ministry of Public Works, and in particular the procurement process. To this end, Minister Edghill has committed to ensuring a familiarization/training session on the subject, to take place soon,” the Ministry statement said.
Edghill told this newspaper that the ministry wants maximum participation from all groups, especially small businesses and recognises the importance of having them trained.
Training and assisting in how to bid, the Minister said, was nothing new for his ministry as it was open to facilitating persons vying for government contracts, as was the case when he met with persons from the Buxton, East Coast of Demerara community and had done the same.
“I realized when we met, that many of them of them never formally engaged the government procurement system. So we will facilitate. Similarly like when we went to Buxton where we had a special session showing them how to handle the bidding documents, prepare their bids to be competitive and so on, we will work with them. What we realised with this group is that they were not having difficulties with compliances, different to what we had found at Buxton, it was that they were not engaging the bidding process,” the minister explained.
“So we will assist in preparing them because you cannot win a government contract if you don’t bid, because of the Procurement Act. It is how to help them to get into that process. So we set a February 18 date where we will make ourselves at their disposal, and we will also seek to get a person from the Tender Board also and we will work with them. They must be able to engage so that they can be considered for participation.”
