Just over two months ago, the President of the Guyana Manufacturers Association (GMSA) Mr. Ramsay Ali told the Stabroek Business that arising out of views which he had expressed on the desirability of the need for there to be ongoing dialogue between government and the private sector on matters pertaining to the well-being of the small business sector, an understanding had been reached that he would meet with Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and Senior Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh. Such an engagement, as we understood it, would address (perhaps among other things) how state institutions established to provide support for the small business sector should behave in the process of providing that support.
Here, it should be stated, that the announcement that such a meeting had been settled upon, and particularly that the government’s ‘team’ to meet with the GMSA President would comprise two of the very senior members of President Irfaan Ali’s Cabinet, namely, Vice President Jagdeo and Senior Minister Singh, appeared to give rise to the expectation that the outcomes of such an encounter would include decisions that might even yield ground-breaking practical benefits for the small business sector. This, having regard to what has been the concerns that continue to be expressed by small businesses arising out of what they feel are engagements that continue to leave their core concerns largely unattended to. The Stabroek Business recalls a recent conversation (a matter of days ago) with a small business owner who, having met with the Small Business Bureau [SBB], purportedly to discuss support that would help an existing micro business advance to ‘the next level,’ emerged from that engagement considerably disenchanted with the outcome. She specifically stated that she felt as though she had had a conversation with “a government ministry” rather than with an institution tailored to respond suitably to “small business concerns.” She had, she said, left the engagement feeling ‘empty’. It is true that the SBB is, in effect, a state agency. However, it is this newspaper’s understanding that the SBB exists as an institution whose main responsibility is to facilitate the growth of the small business sector. The aforementioned visitor to the SBB, however, told the Stabroek Business that she had been subjected to (as she put it) “more push around than the Passport Office.” She had left the premises of the SBB, “disgusted.”
To return to the issue of the agreed meeting between the GMSA President and the two senior government officials, while we found the choice of state officials baffling we certainly felt that the engagement with Mr. Ali was likely to make for more meaningful decision-making in the matter of what we understood to be the GMSA’s likely support role in ensuring a more convivial relationship between the Bureau and small businesses seeking its support. It is now two months (and a few days) since the earliest disclosure of the ‘agreed’ engagement between Mr. Ali and the two senior government officials. Insofar as this newspaper is aware no such engagement has taken place.
Here, one would have thought that the growth of the country’s small/micro business sector, being heavily dependent on the extent to which it benefits from the support of the Bureau, such a meeting would have been treated as a priority. Certainly, seekers of support from the SBB who are altogether preoccupied with either getting their businesses off the ground or growing existing ones are unlikely to see such a meeting take place, and more particularly, to have such an engagement yield outcomes that would redound to the benefit of small businesses owners wishing to have their businesses move on. With so many other issues popping up on the national agenda, many of which, presumably, warranting the attention of the two named senior government officials, one wonders whether the earlier announced meeting is still ‘on the cards’, or whether the issue of seeking to create a more convivial relationship between state institutions assigned to provide support for the growth of small businesses was, in fact, a mere chimera.
