Youth should get ready for major economic takeoff – Ashni Singh
Promising this country’s youth that government will support their business endeavours, Minister with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh says that young people should not be afraid to take risks for fear of failure and as such should start investing in their ideas so as to tap into the “major structural change” this economy will see from this year.
“Guyana’s economy will undergo major structural change. We believe that small businesses, especially from our youth, must be poised to benefit from that. It is why we have plans to work with the sector to identify ways in which we can incubate and nurture more small businesses,” Dr. Singh told Stabroek News yesterday in an interview.
“We believe that small businesses have the potential to improve the livelihoods of thousands of people. The people’s government will address impediments to the growth of small businesses. Small business entrepreneurship is in fact an extremely powerful means through which the youth can be empowered economically. And as a government, we want to encourage young people to develop greater entrepreneurial activity. We will foster this so they need not be afraid to take risks,” he added.
Singh’s call comes on the heels of a meeting between government and the private sector and which also had labour representatives.
Held at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, the meeting saw Singh, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Gail Teixeira discussing with the group areas of interest to the stakeholders.
The Finance Minister said that at that meeting, government had “a very good engagement on issues of interest to the small business sector”. But he said that while the aim is to have holistic expansion of small business enterprises here, a key focus will be to empower youth to start businesses of their own and to let them know that no business idea is irrelevant.
Singh said that youths should be assured that as they believe in themselves, they have a government in the PPP/C that will join with them to make the processes easier to starting their “small hustles” which with the right push can be large booming establishments.
“We are already seeing examples where young people with interesting ideas have those converted into bankable and viable business proposals. We want to foster this, to encourage this, we want to support this,” he stressed.
Positing that while many of this country’s young will go to the “traditional path” of getting themselves educated and seeking employment with a company or in the public sector where they will again aspire to move up the ranks to positions of authority, government believes that “entrepreneurship is an equally attractive path to be pursued by our young people”.
“Go to school, get educated, get exposure but also be brave and don’t be afraid to take risks,” he said.
And given that the economy here is forecast to grow by more than 40 percent this year, Singh said that almost all businesses, with prudent management, should be profitable. Those he said do not have to be limited to oil and gas as spinoff opportunities hold just as significant potential.
He reasoned that some ‘side hustles’ can also be done by youth as they study or work in current sectors now. But with planning and investment in those small businesses they can take off where that would be the dedicated job.
“The world has many examples of young people who took an idea, were willing to venture out and accept a tolerable amount of risk, and converted their ideas into very successful businesses. Some of these are every prominent in the global area,” he said, while pointing out that young persons do not have to look across the seas to see examples of expanding small businesses.
“Equally, we would like more young people to see entrepreneurship as an attractive prospect,” he added.
As he prepares the Budget for the 2021 fiscal year, the Finance Minister said that government’s “expectation is that the productive sector will undergo major change in the coming year and beyond”.
“These changes will arise not only from oil and gas, which of course will be an extremely important contributor to the economy, but from a number of other sectors including new and emerging sectors.”
“If you look across the non oil landscape, we have already identified that agriculture and tourism are poised for major takeoffs, given the level of investments that will be taking place in the sector. Additionally, sectors such as construction, transport logistics and other services are also poised for major expansion. But over and beyond this, apart from growth arising from the traditional corporate and domestic sector we believe that we will also see the emergence of a very strong small business sector,” he said.