A tough ask

Can local micro, small businesses survive the covid-19 onslaught The overwhelming majority of our reportage since March this year has focused on the advent of the coronavirus and the ways in which it has impacted on business as a whole in Guyana. Our primary focus, however, has targeted the impact of the virus on the micro and small business sectors and particularly on their likely longer term survival.

Immediately prior to the onset of the virus earlier this year, the various sub-sectors in the small business sector had undergone a period of unprecedented growth, due primarily to the determination of emerging players to go forward. While the challenge of investment capital continued to be a considerable hindrance to growth, what was most noteworthy was the blossoming of the various types of skills in areas such as agro-processing and in the various creative industries. There had also been, over a relatively short period, a marked improvement in product presentation as manifested in significantly improved packaging and labeling while opportunities, albeit limited ones, for external exposure served to whet the appetites of local small businesses for the more lucrative overseas markets.

Financing, however, was always likely to put a brake on the ambitions of the micro and small business sector. It became clear, very quickly, that financing the growth of the sector did not rank high on the scale of priorities of the lending agencies. At the same time while government continued to ‘talk up’ the sector it failed to demonstrate a comparable inclination to invest in its growth beyond the limited injection of capital into financing the Small Business Bureau. No less significant was the general indifference (with some limited exceptions) of the Business Support Organizations to growing local micro and small businesses, that disinclination becoming even more pronounced as their preoccupation with the gains to be derived from the local content dimension to the new found oil and gas sector grew.

Such growth as has been realized by the micro and small business sector in recent years, however, has been due largely to the energy and ingenuity of the investors in the sector, notably their remarkable inability, over a relatively short period of time to upgrade both product quality and product presentation. Additionally, over the past few years, micro and small businesses have derived limited but encouraging benefit from the public exposure

resulting from events like the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) – staged UNCAPPED event in which government was also involved. This, however, does not gainsay the reality that far fewer resources in terms of both financing and technical support than were needed have been invested in the growth of the micro and small business sector and that it is this, as much as anything else that has been responsible for the stunted growth of the sector.

Several things became painfully obvious about a micro and small businesses sector that had shown more than sufficient promise to warrant better treatment. First, the state never provided any real evidence of a willingness to fully implement the provisions of the Small Business Act, particularly those provisions that had to do with affording small businesses access to selected state contracts; secondly, beyond the creation of the Small Business Bureau (SBB) there appeared to be no further official preparedness to invest seriously in the growth of small businesses; thirdly, little if anything has been done to infuse a measure of entrepreneurial know-how into those micro and small businesses which, through sheer force of will, had gotten themselves off the ground, but were painfully lacking in the requisite business acumen to sustain themselves.

One of the standout features of the emergence of contemporary micro and small businesses in Guyana is the role that these have played in baring the creative skills, the ingenuity and the determination of ordinary Guyanese whose efforts, frankly, have not been rewarded with anything even remotely resembling adequate payback. This much is reflected in the fact that many of micro and small businesses in areas such as catering, craft, agro processing and the various other creative disciplines have not risen significantly above the levels at which they begun. This much is manifested in the fact that significant numbers of these businesses have not been able to lift themselves above vending level.

Interestingly, while other countries in the Caribbean (like Jamaica through JAMPRO) have been investing heavily in the global marketing of local products, the sporadic efforts on local institutions like GOINVEST are not nearly enough to satisfy the need. The less said about the complete failure of the GUYTIE initiative to make a meaningful mark, its public/private sector window dressing-laced presentation notwithstanding, the better.

The focus of this article is not on doom and gloom but on naked realism. Anyone who understands the nature of micro and small businesses and how they work will not have to be told that here in Guyana as much as anywhere else in the world, the more fragile ones have, regrettably, been swept aside and no amount of altruistic talking-up will change that. This is not to say that, even now, the owners of those doomed small enterprises are not gathering themselves for another effort. The road ahead, however, will not be easy. Their efforts are going to have to be supported by institutions that have not always been as supportive as they ought to have been previously. That includes both the state and the lending sectors. Our conversations with some of these intrepid former business owners suggest that they are prepared to try.

There are others who are beginning to put the pieces together for a comeback. Their biggest challenge reposes in their inability to ‘legislate’ for the behavior of covid-19, down the road. For these it is one of those ‘wing a prayer situations’ that are underpinned by equal measures of hope and uncertainty.