The news emanating from the Ministry of Business’ recently released 2016-2020 Development Plan pertaining to skills’ shortages in some key public sector agencies extends to the Small Business Bureau, part of the critical apparatus set up for administering the support mechanisms for small business development. One of the key functions of the Bureau is to evaluate the qualifications of small businesses for modest but in the particular instances, important state grants to help grow their businesses.
After the Bureau was launched in 2013 and various small business owners had their grants approved, the Bureau was also assigned the responsibility of overseeing the progress being made by those businesses towards meeting the official expectations associated with benefiting from the grant.
This newspaper has already commented on the desirability of providing a public update on the findings of the Bureau in relation to just how these beneficiary enterprises have been performing. We believe that information on the earliest batch of beneficiaries would help in the creation of a sort of template that would help determine whether, operationally, there needs to be changes in the system. However, apart from knowing for some time now that the job-creation targets that had been set those small businesses were always unlikely to be met, we know little more because, frankly, not much more has been said.
As of a week or so ago there was a change in the situation insofar as the Ministry of Business has now said that if the Bureau, among other state agencies responsible for supporting the productive sector, is to go forward, it would require an infusion of a range of skills.
Not least amongst these are skills that are necessary to effectively monitor the progress being made by the grant beneficiaries, so that the question immediately arises as to just what is the status quo. Is there anything to report with regard to the period during which these small businesses have been functioning and the help that they have received? Indeed, does the Small Business Bureau have the human resource capability, at this time, to perform, its oversight function effectively and if not, when will that capacity be realized?
There may well have arisen, over time, the view that this newspaper has been persistent in its enquiries about the Bureau and its functioning. That may well be so though we might point out that in both our reporting and our editorials, over time, we have given every encouragement to the Bureau and its work.
One of the obvious concerns that exist has to do with the likelihood of institutions like the Small Business Bureau falling off the radar – so to speak – on account of official neglect, leaving in its wake a trail of dubious tales of misallocation of grant funds and misspending of resources. Occurrences of those kinds usually do much to attract negative international donor attention that inevitability compromises initiatives to get help in the future.
We believe, first, that the work of the Small Business Bureau is sufficiently important for there to be a comprehensive and all-embracing report made public at the earliest possible time that addresses, a priori, just where the grant funds have been channelled so far and some sort of evaluation of whether, up until now, the investments have been worth the while.
Perhaps this is a task which the new Small Business Council may set itself in the short term since in the longer term it may well have implications for the credibility of the entire state-run small business support regime.
