Over 78% of the Small Business Bureau’s (SBB) clients who started five years ago, still have successful businesses, which is a record number for the country, head of the SBB Lowell Porter says.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Porter said that the SBB has completed a survey of a sample of the 10,000 clients in their database from all the administrative regions and this showed great success stories.
“We also had (a) survey of our clients because one of the things that was put out there is that most of the businesses fail in the first two years. I think internationally that is also true… We went around to the beneficiaries and we went to them to find out how their businesses were doing and from that we finalised a report that shows us that 78% of those clients that started five years ago, are still in business and that is a record number for Guyana. I mean, it was never, ever documented so these are the things we feel good about,” Porter said while underscoring that it is important for the SBB to continue keeping track of their clients and the health of their businesses.
He said they will continue to do monitoring and evaluation of the businesses over time to ensure that they continue growing.
For the year, the SBB has been able to set up help desks in Regions Two, Six, Seven, Nine and Ten after signing Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the town councils and chambers of commerce in the respective regions. The agency also aims to establish offices in all the other regions, except Region Four where the head office is located.
Porter also revealed that the SBB has surpassed most of its targets for this year in terms of training, persons benefitting from awareness campaigns, loan guarantees, grants dispersed and jobs created or sustained. However, they have not met their target for loans dispersed.
In terms of training, while they targeted 770 persons, they were able to train 960 persons as of October 31 and the number is expected to further increase. Porter said that they are also working on including more training programmes such as small business management, record keeping and business plan writing, among others.
With respect to loan guarantees and grants disbursed, while the SBB had a target of 55 and 127, respectively, they were able to give guarantees for 66 small businesses and disburse grants to 127 clients.
In terms of persons benefiting from awareness campaigns, while they had planned on reaching at least 2,500, they were able to reach more than 3,747 persons. As for jobs created and sustained, the SBB envisioned 275 but was able to record 345.
However, while they had aimed for disbursing 75 loans, they were only able to complete 68 so far for the year.
Porter emphasised that the figures are all up to October 31 and can change. He had explained that despite their clients having recorded an insignificant delinquency level in repaying the loans, 50% of the loans applied for by their clients are not approved by the banks.
The SBB has also done specialised training for sustainable mining and forestry where 387 small miners and loggers were trained in being environmentally friendly.
“In 2018, we worked on the classroom entrepreneurship programme. This programme was to actually sensitise entrepreneurship from the high school level because we believe that if you start earlier, you can develop better entrepreneurs,” he said.
While it was initially a pilot programme, they were able to train 100 students from the 10 different regions which will continue in the coming year.
