It may have surprised some mainstream private sector representatives when representatives of the small business sector made an appearance at the Arthur Chung Conference Center on Monday to present a case further to pay much more attention to its growth needs in order to place them in the better to, among other things, benefit from some of the promised side effects from the oil and gas sector and otherwise consolidate their operations.
We say without apology to any other media house that, for many months, this newspaper has been singularly demanding that the state, the banking sector, and certainly the country’s high-profile Business Support Organizations have displayed a gesture of profound apathy. to the growth needs of small and small businesses, in particular. More recently and against the backdrop of the advent of COVID-19, the pittance given as a state grant through the Bureau of Small Businesses has been rare enough to cause some of the traditionally weaker businesses to literally die on their feet. . We know because we’ve been engaging with some of the hapless owners. Indeed, even this year’s budget allocation for small business growth and development is nothing to write about.
Furthermore, it is no secret that our commercial banks – most of them, that is – have maintained a state of apathy, even arrogance, in the face of the state of small business. As for the BSO’s, more often than not, their individual interest in the Local Content ‘spit’ seems to stem from the foreign investment coverage of the country’s oil and gas activities. Here, we cite as a partial exception, the limited efforts made by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) to raise the profile of challenges facing small and small businesses.
We have argued previously that the true position of small and small businesses repeats itself in the fact that, as far as engagement with government is concerned, they have been continually granted an independent seat at the table. Recently, it has been the GMSA, for the most part, that has been tagging some of the concerns of large and small businesses on its own agenda during its engagements with central government. That, obviously, has not been enough.
Perhaps the biggest recent blow to the well-being of small businesses to date occurred last year, stemming from the problems associated with the full and effective implementation of the state contracts 20% allocation to small businesses, a prerogative provided for the Small Business Act.
Whatever the reason for this (and we believe much of it is due to the government’s failure to capture the moment) it should not have happened and at present it is decidedly unclear when this provision of the Act will be fully implemented even with the passage of the recent Senate amendment.
Thoroughly and transparently implemented, the 20% concession can help reduce the dependency syndrome that it has for the survival of businesses in the micro and small business sector.
While the government never ceases to ‘brag’ about the importance of women empowerment, it has not occurred to them over time – at least so it seems – that women make up a significant proportion of local small business owners. When one adds to that number the amount of additional dependents, then the case for stepping up support for small businesses significantly becomes stronger.
The most that can be said about the ‘invasion’ by the Local Content forum’s small business sector is that it allows the forum space to go beyond the mechanics of Local Content, venturing into how, perhaps, provision could be made on and share the spoils fairer. At the same time it should be noted that the discourse took place in the presence of the President of the Republic.
What we have to wait to see is whether it was an extension of the usual ‘talking shops’ that follow at times like Monday’s Local Content forum (which, of course, cannot be ruled out) the small business discourse. a kind of ‘startup jump’ that moves the process of paying more attention to the growth of the small business sector in a new direction. Will have to wait and see.