Jamaica small business accelerator programme an ‘eye opener’ for Guyana

There is much that the Government of Guyana, the country’s banking sector, and its Business Support Organizations can learn from the recently announced JM$60 million Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC) investment in the development of sixty enterprises in the country’s micro, small and medium-sized (MSME) sector.

The initiative, which is scheduled to ‘kick in’ early next year, will serve as the engine for a six-month intensive development programme aimed at enhancing the overall growth of the micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) sector, a December 19 report in the Sunday Jamaica Observer says.

The programme, according to the newspaper report, is built around the areas of strategy development, financial management, marketing and sales, operational improvement, digital transformation and business valuation, and “offers participants the benefit of training, increased networking and financing opportunities along with the prospect of increased sales and business growth.”

The report on the initiative also states that one of the “high points” of the programme is a “one-week boot camp” to be facilitated by a team of JBDC business development experts who will be supported by consultants in various fields.

The Observer says that a critical part of the exercise will be what it describes as “pitch preparation in order to face potential investors at the end of the programme.”

The disclosure regarding the initiative for micro and small businesses in Jamaica reminds of the struggles that local businesses of the same sizes and levels of development continue to endure and which, in many instances, have grown worse in the face of the advent of the Covid19 pandemic. Micro and small businesses with which the

Stabroek Business has had prolonged contact have said that such “training and coaching” as is available locally, very often fails to address some of the root problems facing them, particularly given the fact that many of these local micro and small enterprises are managed by ‘firsttimers’.

Specifically, some micro and small businesses have commented on what they see as a ‘divide’ between themselves and the country’s Business Support Organizations (BSO), made even wider by the latter’s single-minded preoccupation in recent years with the country’s emerging oil & gas industry and the gains to be derived from hitching their sails to the mast of the Local Content dimension to that sector.

The Jamaica Observer report says that the first objective of its forthcoming JBDC business development initiative is to seek to “enable businesses to secure annual sales of 10 per cent and upwards and provide them with greater access to financing and links to strategic business partners including angel/institutional investors and fund managers.”

“The programme seeks to attract entrepreneurs engaged in business for over one year, possessing a scalable business model, earning annual revenues of $5 million or less and having a management team of over two people,” the Observer report adds.

While local micro and small businesses have, from time to time, mounted spirited lobbies for government’s support in their quest for growth and expansion, few

would doubt that those appeals have been met with limited and largely ineffective response. While the launch of the local Small Business Bureau (SBB) had triggered an outburst of optimism over the likelihood of growth in that sector, almost a decade after its launch, the SBB has failed to create an enhanced and visible level of vibrancy in the micro and small business sector. Funds available directly through state allocations to the SBB as well as those arising out of agreements reached between the Bureau and the local banking sector have failed to enhance the performance of the sector to the extent that has allowed it to impact on its main targeted goal, significantly increased levels of employment. Nor has the work of the SBB been able to produce any standout ‘shining stars’ in the micro and small-business sector.

If the recent wilting of a number of enterprises in the micro and small-sector can be attributed to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on consumer demand arising mainly out of reduced consumer income, the Bureau’s failure to significantly grow those sectors becomes painfully apparent long prior to the onset of the pandemic.

Setting aside the failure of the SBB to trigger the creation of a wider environment in which micro and small businesses could receive access to adequate funding, that aspect of its envisaged operations that was intended to provide relevant training for emerging entrepreneurs simply failed to materialise while the envisaged government initiative that had been intended to offer small businesses access to state contracts never really took off. Indeed, it was the failure of government to act with any sense of urgency in putting in place mechanisms that would have allowed access by small and even some micro businesses to state contracts that may well have been its biggest failure up to this time.

Historically, micro and small enterprises across the sectors in Jamaica have always been amongst the standout enterprises across the region. Contextually, it is unclear whether the JBDC’s recent breakthrough will impact on both public and private sector attitudes to the micro and small businesses sectors here.