On the heels of the disclosure made during his presentation at the Thursday August 3, Dinner and Awards Ceremony that the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) would be seeking to engage government on the issue of ‘a seat’ at the ‘table’ of the state-run Small Business Bureau, GMSA President Ramsay earlier this week told the Stabroek Business that arising out of engagement with government on the issue, he will be meeting shortly with Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and Senior Minister within the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, to discuss matters affecting the members of the Association including those to which he alluded at the August 3 event.
Ali told the Stabroek Business earlier this week that the GMSA had been in receipt of positive responses to his request for a ‘sit down’ with government on a number of issues, including ways in which the GMSA can bring its practical experience to bear in important elements of the running of the Small Business Bureau. While the GMSA President made no disclosure regarding a time line for the meeting with the senior government officials, he said the move had arisen out of the conviction on the private sector body’s part that it can play a role in enhancing the performance of the state-run body responsible for administering financial support to local small businesses. While the SBB was established as a state-run entity under the provisions of the Small Business Act, questions have been raised by this newspaper, as well as by small businesses seeking the state-entity’s support, as to whether its operating procedures are not much too hinged to the ‘culture’ of the state bureaucracy to effectively serve the interests of private sector-oriented small business.
Small businesses have continually shared with this newspaper what they says is, frequently, the dilatoriness associated with expediting requests for financial support through the SBB. Some of the Bureau’s critics say that its shortcomings are directly hinged to oversight strictures arising out of the entity having to function under the jurisdiction of a government Ministry. In his interview with the Stabroek Business, Ali said that he believed that the GMSA can offer to the SBB the kind and quality of support that would help the entity to expedite requests for assistance from small businesses more expeditiously. This deficiency, he opined, may well derive from the need for the Bureau to have more technical personnel to treat with customer issues, adding that such challenges can be overcome through the insertion of “technical personnel or consultants” into the process.
These personnel, he said, need to understand business proposals in order to have these vetted and expedited efficiently and with due haste. And according to Ali, the GMSA can support the SBB through the insertion into the process of technical persons who can expertly assess projects and, where necessary, make recommendations with regard to how they can be improved in order to ensure that they are successfully ‘rolled out.’ Ali, meanwhile, also envisages that the GMSA can work with small businesses associated with the SBB to assist them in the preparation of business proposals or proposals for grants or loans. What this means, he said, is that when proposals are presented to the SBB, they will be in a state of readiness to evade what, sometimes is the “back and forth” experiences which some proposals have to experience.
Meanwhile, the GMSA President told the Stabroek Business that the Association intends to advocate for an increase in the grant component of the financial support being offered to applicants for financing for start-up businesses. Beyond their initial encounters with the SBB, Ali said, the GMSA can offer further guidance and monitoring to projects that have benefitted from grants and loans. He said that there should not be situations in which the SBB approves loans and grants and “simply leave it there.” Follow-up monitoring visits should be done and advice given accordingly. Meanwhile, against the backdrop of persistent concerns expressed by applicants to the SBB regarding the meagerness, Ali said that the GMSA intended to make a recommendation that the amounts of initial loans be increased.
