Local medium and small enterprises (MSE’s) registered with the Small Business Bureau (SBB) and which have “implemented solid standards” in the quality of their products and services and demonstrated service delivery excellence could find themselves listed by the Bureau as having qualified to be recommended to larger companies seeking to contract or sub-contract smaller companies to provide products and services.
The disclosure, made in a lengthy internal assessment of the eight-year-old state entity established under the 2004 Small Business Act and due to be published in The Guyana Review later this month says that qualifying small businesses will benefit from advertisements executed by the Bureau on behalf of those companies “to promote their services to the large enterprises.” These large companies will then engage the Bureau in instances when a business opportunity that is consistent with the capabilities of SME arises. The large company offering a contract opportunity would have the opportunity to contact one or more of the SME’s recommended by the Bureau in order to secure proposals relating to the execution of the particular job, the disclosure from the SBB says of an initiative which, according to the article “involves lot of business research in our database and in the field” and which it expects can significantly support the growth of small businesses in Guyana.
The disclosure of what is, in effect, a new role for the SBB points to government’s intention to enhance the clout of the Bureau in pursuit of small business growth against the backdrop of the view espoused by its critics that its performance has fallen below expectations since its substantive commencement of operations in 2013.
