The PSC must embrace the entire business sector

In his conversations with the Stabroek Business on plans for Guyana’s participation in the October 9th – 10th Florida International Trade Conference and Expo, President of the Guyana-America Chamber of Commerce (GACC) Wesley Kirton went to considerable lengths to emphasize the efforts that the Chamber had made to ensure adequate participation at the event by local small businesses including arrangements which the GACC had made to ensure that the participation of those small businesses benefitted from some measure of subsidy.

We believe that Mr. Kirton’s deliberate and sustained emphasis on the efforts by the GACC to ensure that local small businesses received every opportunity from what the fair will have to offer was, as well, a thinly veiled message about the need for local Business Support Organizations to pay far greater interest in the growth and development of small and medium-sized enterprises. We might add that this is an issue which, if the Stabroek Business has anything to say on it, will not go away until entities like the Private Sector Commission, particularly though not exclusively, demonstrate a greater interest in supporting the well-being of small businesses.

One hastens to add that, in recent years, the standout Business Support Organization insofar as support for small businesses is concerned has been the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA). Its UNCAPPED events at Sophia and the Providence Stadium provided what the small businesses themselves told the Stabroek Business were outstanding and invaluable opportunities for small business product promotion and now that there is a new executive in place at the GMSA this newspaper will be monitoring the continuity or otherwise of the organization in that regard.

Beyond that, we believe that in recent years a number of so-called SME’s have grown to the point where they more than merit ‘a seat at the table’ in the major Business Support Organizations. Frankly, this newspaper doesn’t hesitate to point out that for far too long the Private Sector Commission (PSC) has been dominated by a relatively modest group of businesses and business owners, a circumstance which has led to frequent charges that in real terms they are virtually an exclusive club.

The fact of the matter is that the BSO’s and more particularly the PSC possess a level of lobbying clout with government and other state institutions which the small businesses do not have. It would be a good thing, for example, if apart from tax concessions and removal of import duties and taxes we could hear much more from the PSC on matters like the virtual choke-hold that exists on commercial bank lending to micro and small businesses as well as the stubborn refusal of so-called regional partners like Trinidad and Tobago to remove their protectionist stranglehold from the importation of local goods into the twin-island Republic. It would be a good thing, too, if the BSO’s as a whole, their own lack of enthusiasm for unionized workers notwithstanding, show a greater measure of public concern for the conditions under which Guyanese workers will have to serve when expatriate companies seeking a piece of the oil and gas ‘action’ really kick in.

The truth of the matter is, that on the whole, the PSC, particularly, has been mostly about the interests of the ‘heavy hitters’ in the private sector. There is no serious voice, no vigorous and sustained lobby within the PSC that speaks seriously and consistently to the challenges confronting local SME’s and how these can be tackled and overcome.

Contextually, we point to the very deliberate and focused emphasis which the Guyanese/American Chamber of Commerce has been placing on small business participation on next month’s Fort Lauderdale Trade Expo including the opportunities that the GACC have created to subsidize their participation. Such initiatives, we believe, are certainly worthy of emulation by the PSC. Indeed, it would be more than worth the while if, sooner rather than later, the PSC can sit down and seriously re-evaluate its entire policy disposition to SME’s and make the requisite dispositional adjustments with due haste.