After several years of attending events like GuyExpo, interacting with manufacturers, particularly in the agro-processing sector, monitoring the emergence of the Small Business Bureau and attending endless fora where small business issues are discussed, this newspaper has arrived at some unshakable conclusions. The first—and perhaps the most important—is that the market opportunities available both at home and overseas for locally manufactured items, particularly condiments and other food items, are substantial enough to provide sufficient jobs to make an important difference to the prevailing unemployment levels.
Our second conclusion is that there is no shortage of Guyanese, particularly women, who are prepared, even given their limited skills and financial resources, to enter into one form of small/micro enterprise or another and to access training for themselves to create products that can meet the expectations of the local and—in some instances—even overseas market. We have seen some outstanding examples of this in the agro-processing and furniture-making sectors.
Allied to this, is our belief that these would-be entrepreneurs are only likely to succeed if they are supported by institutions that provide various forms of technical and financial assistance to help them refine both their technical and production-related skills as well as their business acumen. We hasten to add that there is yet to materialize any persuasive evidence—the emergence of the Small Business Bureau notwithstanding—of any sustained official preparedness to take those modest enterprises forward.
On the issue of financing, it has to be said, first, that commercial banks are not—for obvious reasons—ideally positioned to meet all of the very many needs of the small business sector and, second, that there are simply not sufficient alternative lending agencies to adequately meet those needs. In cases where there may be limited windows of borrowing opportunity these are frequently attended by frustrating borrowing conditionalities, which many potential borrowers are simply not prepared to go through.
We believe too, that all too often, small and micro businesses are not offered a great deal more than promises and limited gestures. Small businesses in the manufacturing sector, for example—where the opportunities for market-driven growth are perhaps the strongest—cannot by any stretch of the imagination, survive and grow without serious state-funded investment in technology, incubator-type factories, packaging and labelling capacity and some measure of marketing capability. In the absence of these facilities what is often left is large volumes of sub-standard commodities that are poorly packaged and labelled (and therefore not suitable for up-market supermarket shelves either at home or abroad) and dependent on patronage for the modest sales they attract.
As far as manufacturing in the food and condiments and the craft sectors is concerned, the situation in our Amerindian communities is instructive. We can no longer honestly deny that we have perpetrated a situation of insulting patronage as far as the promotion of Amerindian-produced commodities is concerned. We have become steeped in the practice of parading the produce of ‘our indigenous people’ at managed urban fairs and exhibitions and to have them there long enough to seize photo ops and other forms of media exposure; and since there is virtually any absence of infrastructure—transportation of goods being the most important one—to genuinely take Amerindian entrepreneurship forward, these contrived gestures that expose them to urban events from time to time do absolutely nothing.
We return, after several weeks, to the theme of the Small Business Bureau and its pursuits. After more than a year we do not believe that the hype associated with this organization has been matched by comparable achievement. When last we checked, we learnt that Bureau officials were monitoring the projects for which grants were allocated. We would have thought that by now the Bureau would have been ready to report to the public on the pace of progress. That has not been the case and we must wonder why. As a general rule, the local small business sector has benefited from little more than lip service or from strictly short-term attention which tends to disappear once the initiative has had the requisite media attention. Of course it has to be said too that the local business support organizations have been poor lobbyists for the small business sector as have been the media as a whole.
Interestingly, there are examples in other countries—Brazil being one that comes immediately to mind—from which we can learn as far as the growth of small business is concerned. Small business in other countries has served to remove entire families from abject poverty and to increase meaningful employment. There is no reason why the same cannot happen here in Guyana. But it has no realistic chance of happening unless we embrace the sector as a serious option for job-creation. To do so, government needs to move well beyond what, historically, has been an addiction to lip service.
