This newspaper has paid a particular interest in the Micro and Small Enterprise Development (MSED) Project under the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) as a mechanism for supporting the growth and development of the small business sector and moreso since the project was launched by President Donald Ramotar in October last year. The details of the project are a matter of public record and we believe it is fair to say that it is widely expected that the US$5 million available under this first phase of the Project can give real meaning to the provisions of the Small Business Act which, after ten years, is, in actual terms, no more than expressions of good intentions on paper.
The two aspects of the Project of the greatest interest are, first, the collateral support service funded by the Project and which addresses the age-old problem of small businesses not meeting the collateral requirements for commercial bank lending. The second facility is the grant scheme under which those small businesses with no immediate commercial bank borrowing potential can access modest grants with which to help sustain their businesses. There is also funding under the Project for training in various areas pertaining to business development.
Information gleaned from the Small Business Bureau, the body created under the Small Business Act for the administration of such projects indicates that more than 2,000 businesses have now formalized their interest in benefitting from what the Project has to offer. We are told too that some small businesses have already been engaging the commercial banking sector, having been given the ‘green light’ to do so by the Bureau.
It is not difficult to discern that the MSED Project is potentially the most promising small business support project from which this country has ever benefitted. Its value reposes not so much in the extent of its finances but in the role it can play in genuinely kick-starting a vibrant and sustainable small business sector, something which we have been unable to do over many years and to create more employment which, incidentally, is one of the stated expectations of the Project.
The Inter-American Development Bank has oversight responsibility for the execution of the Project, the day-to-day administration falling to the Bureau. Overlooking the Bureau is a Small Business Council which, it would appear, serves as a clearing house for decisions made by the Bureau.
With such a bureaucracy to which ministerial and perhaps even Cabinet clearances and sanctions might be attached, one expects that there will be procedural delays in the execution phase of the Project.
That having been said one wonders whether, a year after the formal unveiling of the Project, much more ought not to have been done to take the process forward. Up to a few weeks ago we had been hearing of differences in the interpretation of aspects of the procedures associated with commercial bank lending between the banks and the prospective borrowers. Shockingly, we also learnt that since the launch of the Project by the President, almost a year ago, not a single small business has been able to access a grant from the Bureau.
Part of the reason why the Stabroek Business has continued to follow this project is because-on not a few occasions- small businesses that have ‘signed up’ with the Bureau have raised the issue of the delay with us. While there has been no lack of willingness on the part of the Bureau’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Derrick Cummings to engage us, his responses have remained limited to providing explanations with regard to the procedures associated with the full and final implementation of that phase of the Project that will see small businesses securing the promised tangible benefits. The problem is that we still have no idea whatsoever as to when that thicket of procedures will be cut through so that we can get to some reasonable ‘clearing.’
It is precisely because of the various layers of bureaucracy and potential bottlenecks that characterize this Project that one is unable to say just where the blockage lies. Suffice it to say that the interminable delay has now gone way beyond the stage of being excused on the grounds of what the people in the bureaucracy are fond of describing as ‘putting mechanisms in place.’ We have been in the process of putting those mechanisms in place for at least three years. From our vantage point we get a strong sense that there are many cases amongst the potential small business beneficiaries in which frustration has given way to cynicism. That is hardly surprising since there can no longer be any reasonable excuse for the prevailing state of affairs particularly when so much appears to be riding on the success of this Project.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that two Presidents have been directly involved with this Project, President Bharrat Jagdeo whose diplomatic legwork was key to the creation of the Fund that now supports the Project and President Donald Ramotar who launched the Project with much aplomb last year. Those circumstances alone would appear to warrant serious high-level intervention to ensure that this long-delayed Project finally gets going.
