With significant sections of the population in the Caribbean opting for entrepreneurial pursuits over salaried jobs, or else, pursuing small business undertakings to supplement pre—-existing salaried jobs, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is opening up more training support opportunities for the region’s substantive and emerging entrepreneurs.
A report from the Bank’s Bridgetown headquarters a week ago,
stated that the CDB had recently trained one hundred and seventy four (174) persons from across the region “directly engaged with Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, (MSMEs)” in order to provide “much-needed capacity development within the sector.”
The initiative derives from the Bank’s Caribbean Technological Consultancy Services (CTCS) which, the report says, has strengthened the skills of business development officers and business development specialists from eighteen of the Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) in areas that include business continuity planning, digital and social media marketing, financial literacy and management.
The CDB’s Senior Operations Officer, Michael Thomas, has been quoted as saying that the business training workshops “are part of a larger drive being pursued by CDB, in partnership with the private sector to create a more robust ecosystem for businesses. “We have heard and responded to the requests from MSMEs for support to address their management and operational challenges following the pandemic; and through this effort we hope to strengthen business management, digitization and the resilience of MSMEs in our BMCs,” Thomas is quoted as saying.
Both the state and the private sectors in Guyana, where the advent of oil and gas has triggered a surge of interest locally in entrepreneurial pursuits, ought to be interested in the CDB’s business offering, given evidence here of the emergence of a surge of small and micro businesses seeking entrepreneurial openings in the now oil-rich country.
Back in July, the staging by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and GTT of National Small Business Week saw the emergence of significant numbers of mostly women-led micro and small businesses, many of them run by young persons, unschooled in the disciplines associated with conventional entrepreneurship but keen to open up income-generating opportunities for themselves and in some instances for small families.
The scarcity of either state-run or privately operated institutions specializing in business training in Guyana has meant that many emerging micro and small businesses in Guyana are ‘taking the stage’ on a trial and error business, a circumstance that raises questions about their likely long term survivability.
While the advent of the Small Business Bureau (SBB) in Guyana has opened up a pathway for financial support for small business initiatives by government, emerging small business owners are, for the most part, left to fend for themselves, in terms of developing and implementing business models that are best suited to the nature of their particular entrepreneurial pursuits.
Recently, an understanding was reached between the local private sector-driven Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) and government that the two sides will meet to discuss the GMSA providing provide support for the state-run SBB in helping the institution to embrace practices that would better position it to more effectively execute its mandate.
Acting Head of the CDB’s Private Sector Division, Lisa Harding is quoted as saying recently that the Bank’s training initiative “contributes to regional private sector development, including MSMEs, as it aims to strengthen the operational capacity, increase access to finance and enhance the competitiveness of these enterprises.”
Here in Guyana a lack of resources coupled with long-standing official indifference to providing robust support for small business development have been, in large measure, responsible for the stunted growth of the sector. Even with the advent of oil and gas and the attendant increase of resources, the small business sector continues to endure proportionately limited attention whilst institutions set up ostensibly to aid private sector growth are seen as muscle-bound by state bureaucracy and not suitably structured to provide timely and practical responses to the needs of the country’s growing army of small businesses. The media report on the CDB training initiative indicates that “between 70 and 85 percent of enterprises, contribute between 60 and 70 percent of GDP and account for approximately 50 percent of employment, including those from marginalized groups such as women, youth, indigenous communities and persons with disabilities. In addition, almost 40 percent of small businesses in the Caribbean are owned by women, with up to 60 percent ownership in some countries.”
