Business Support Organizations ill-equipped to meet private sector needs
Georgetown Chamber President, Vishnu Doerga wants local Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) to improve their capacity to provide advocacy, technical support and other services to the country’s private sector, responsibilities which he says, are not being discharged effectively at this time.
In a wide-ranging interview with this newspaper, Doerga broached a number of issues relating to the state of the private sector including the challenges and opportunities confronting the business community in the wake of the discovery of oil and the impending commencement of the recovery process in 2020.
The current CEO of the Guyana franchise of the internationally renowned business coaching organization, Action Coach told Stabroek Business that with the longstanding prospect of Guyana becoming an oil economy now lying on the country’s doorstep the local business support infrastructure had little choice but to raise its game urgently if local businesses are to optimize the advantages presented by the opportunity.
In a sharp critique of the overall local business support infrastructure, Doerga declared that the country’s “more than thirty” BSO’s ”are seriously lacking in capacity to meet the needs of the private sector.” The situation, he said, was likely to become even more dire if remedial action is not taken ahead of the advent of oil and gas as factors in the Guyana economy.
Doerga told Stabroek Business that the failings of the local BSO’s had resulted largely, though not exclusively, from their inability to continually generate sufficient financial resources to recruit qualified professionals to run their operations efficiently. And pointing directly to the country’s three major BSO’s, the Private Sector Commission, (PSC) the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI), Doerga said that the scarcity of financial resources had meant that they were “barely able to cover their expenses” and therefore unable to extend themselves to provide the key services that they ought to be providing to their members. “The question that arises has to do with what is to be done about the gap that exists between what they ought to be delivering and what they actually deliver. The BSO’s probably take in around half a billion dollars and the bulk of it is used to keep the