The Stabroek Business’ views on the ‘hands on,’ operating role which the state plays in entities set up for advancing the interests of the business sector are well-known. We have commented on more than one occasion on what we feel is, all too frequently, the complete immersing of the state bureaucracy in critical aspects of institutions established to advance the interests of the small business sector. Political intervention, if you will. While there can be no question than that government has an overarching role in the monitoring of the work of state entities of any kind, principally to ensure accountability for state funds assigned to those entities, there has always been a concern over what is seen as a strong inclination on the part of state functionaries/agencies to want to play an operating role in the running of these institutions.
Contextually, it has become commonplace for the decision-making processes in such agencies to be driven by edict rather than by the rules that are in place to guide the process… crass, open and shut political interventions that reduce public perceptions of the substantive worth of the institutions. The fact that significant numbers of small business owners and aspiring owners complain constantly about the ‘red tape’ and dilatoriness associated with engaging state agencies designed to aid small business growth is testament to the frustration they feel over what we in Guyana term ‘the push around’ that they experience in the process of transactions with state agencies designed to support the small business sector. These practices have done no more to discredit those institutions and cause the conclusion to be arrived at that those institutions are no more than ‘filters’ through which state directives are passed and which are designed to ensure indirect but, nonetheless, firm political control.
Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) President, Ramsay Ali, in his address at the Association’s recent gala dinner, made what we believe to be a clear and unmistakable pitch to cause a greater measure of private sector ‘grounding’ to be infused into the modus operandi of the state-run Small Business Bureau. One of the critical functions of the Bureau is to examine/evaluate applications made by existing and prospective small businesses for state support in their pursuits. Regrettably, there are too many instances where, it seems, the ‘face’ which some ‘applicants’ say they have been ‘shown’ suggests that there are cases in which criteria for securing loans/grants extend beyond conventional qualifications. This, at least, has been, in quite a few instances, the impression which the Stabroek Business has been given. Where criteria for preferment extend beyond those publicly advertised by the relevant institutions and where the system is undergirded by a regime of ‘back door access,’ it is at that point that tongues begin to wag about favouritism and where the integrity of institutions set up to serve are eroded. This happens in instances where the application of procedures is supplanted by phone calls.
While the issue of what one might call ‘outside intervention’ was clearly not the undergirding theme of what the GMSA President had to say at the dinner, there was no mistaking his position that since the SBB’s functions embrace, in their entirety, providing vital support for small business growth, then it stands to reason that the institution’s operating regime should be driven by functionaries who understands small business culture and whose decision-making is not influenced by other consideration including political ones. Contextually, and for the sake of both the effectiveness and the integrity of the Small Business Bureau, we believe that a seat for the GMSA at the Small Business Bureau table is well-merited. Such a move ought not only to cause the Bureau to strengthen its professional bona fides; its image and its integrity are also likely to be enhanced.
