Gov’t to engage big companies operating here on procuring ‘intermediate goods’ from local suppliers – Business Ministry Strategic Plan
Large and multinational companies operating in Guyana are to be engaged by government with a view to determining whether local suppliers can provide them with some categories of goods currently being imported from overseas.
The recently released 2016-2020 Strategic Plan promulgated by the Ministry of Business says that a workshop is to be conducted with those companies “to determine which of their currently imported intermediate goods could be procured locally from an existing supplier,” an exercise which it says “will help to compile a catalogue of demanded products and their quality and quantity specifications.” The catalogue will be made available to small and medium-scale companies. No timeframe is provided for the holding of the workshop.
The promised initiative is consistent with a vision for the growth and development of local small and medium-sized enterprises articulated by government, which envisages, among other things, increased market opportunities for goods produced locally.
The Strategic Plan says, meanwhile, that government is pinning its hopes for the growth and expansion of small business development on the successful intensification of the services provided by the Small Business Bureau (SBB) despite lingering questions about the capacity of the bureau to effectively execute its mandate.
Against the backdrop of increasing official dependence on the bureau to provide both grant financing and training to small business aspirants across the country, the Ministry of Business has now dropped a broad hint that the work of the key agency could be stymied down the road by funding constraints. In its recently released 2016-2020 Strategic Plan the Ministry of Business says that in the process of seeking to execute its mandate, “inadequate funding is a major concern” for the bureau. The report says that already, the bureau finds itself having to “water down” its approach “at the expense of appearing unproductive and invisible to the private sector.”
Part of the threat to the continuity of