MSMEs hurting from f lawed perception
GETTING MICRO, small, and mediumsized (MSMEs) businesses to realise anywhere near their full potential in order to contribute in a sustainable way to national and regional development will require a fundamental shift in the way Jamaicans view these enterprises, noted Donovan Stanberry, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Investment, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries.
He said that the perception of smallscale entrepreneurship as a second-rate profession has been institutionalised and continues to be perpetuated by the local school system.
“If you are bright, then you go to learn to be an engineer or a doctor. If you love to argue and chat, then you do history and literature and GP and become a lawyer, and if you not that bright, then your consolation is business (doing) POB and accounts, etc,” he said yesterday at the media launch of the 2017 Caribbean MSME Conference at the Spanish Court Hotel, New Kingston.
“It came out very clearly that you are not that sophisticated if you earned your living from doing business.You are praised and looked upon as people with status and credibility if you earned from inheritance, and I always wondered where that inheritance came from in the first place because in the final analysis, labour is the father of wealth.”
AGAINST CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
In this regard, Jamaica, according to Stanberry, has been moving against the tide of conventional wisdom, a fact brought home during his recent visit to Mexico, which provided the opportunity to interact with people from all over Latin America and the Caribbean who were engaged in looking at issues relating to SMEs.
He pointed out the following as a major takeaway from that interaction.
“In deed and in fact there is strength and inspiration that can be derived from a commonality of experiences,” Stanberry stated.
If you are bright, then you go to learn to be an engineer or a doctor. If you love to argue and chat, then you do history and literature and GP and become a lawyer, and if you not that bright, then your consolation is business (doing) POB and accounts, etc