• 813 grants disbursed 2014 -2019
• 78% of clients still in business
A packed reception hall at the Regency Suites Hotel in Georgetown on Friday, February 14, witnessed the staging of the first ever awards ceremony hosted by the local Small Business Bureau (SBB) just over six years after government had teamed up with the Inter-American Development Bank to unveil a US$10 million initiative targeting local resource-starved small businesses by offering loans and grants to their proprietors and providing guarantees for loans secured from local commercial banks.
Last Friday’s event, apart from affording a measure of public recognition for small business owners who, over the years, have attracted a less-than-deserved level of official attention hugely disproportionate to the contribution that they have made to job-creation, served to offer a measure of emotional reward for a support project which is yet to deliver on what had been promised at its launch almost seven years ago.
The Small Business Bureau has its origins in a project known as the Building Alternative Livelihood for Vulnerable Groups project, funded under the Guyana-Norway partnership. It had been expected that the project would create some 2,200 jobs though it remains unclear just how many jobs have been created so far.
