Back in June last year, Chief Executive Officer of the Small Business Bureau, Dr Lowell Porter, expressed open disappointment over the fact that the country’s commercial banking sector did not work with the Bureau to provide more funding options for small businesses and startups across several sectors of the economy. Dr Porter is by no means the first state-sector official concerned with small business development to make this observation. He was, however, the first such official, as far back as we can remember to say so publicly.
More recently, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) utilised its column in this year’s Georgetown Chamber of Commerce Business Guyana periodical to take a tilt at what it says are the “notoriously high” interest rates of the local commercial banking sector. The comment may well have caught many observers by surprise since whilst the business sector has been brooding over interest rates for many years, it has held a strictly conservative line when it comes to assuming a public posture on the matter.
