OJ - Gov’t “dead serious” to see success of small businesses
In an exclusive interview with Virgin Islands News Online, Kevin “OJ” Smith who has been tasked with the responsibility to develop programmes to reactive the Bureau, said while he could not put a specific time line as to when the Bureau itself will be fully ready, he can say that they are hoping that sometime before the end of the year, they can have the financial structure sorted out with the banks. The main objectives of the Bureau is to provide access to capital for small businesses and capacity building training.
“I don’t want to give a time frame as we have to wait for them to critique what I sent and for them to respond. They may come back with some suggestions of their own which we would have to address,” he disclosed. “I am confident that we can have the programme running in a relatively short order.”
The former candidate for political office in the third district, who had spoken briefly at Scotiabank’s Small Business Seminar on Saturday April 28, 2012, said while many of the commercial banks already have their small business programmes such as Scotiabank, Government is trying to work with them on developing the specifics that everybody can agree on for the Government guarantee programme which he said is similar to that in countries such as Canada, the United States of America and Trinidad and Tobago.
“The idea is for us to agree on the terms. We already had the initial discussions with the banks I sent the banks some more detailed information of how the programme will be structured, we are working on some of the legal documents that will govern the structure and we are also working with other regional and international agencies to provide as much coverage and resources for small businesses which includes the EU (European Union) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).”
In addition, Mr. Smith said Government wants to quantify the amount of capital that needs to be made available for lending and it will be doing a credit demand survey, during the summer months of this year. “We also feel it necessary to make sure that the National Bank is also providing services to small businesses, historically they always have but we are trying to do some additional stuff with them and that’s why we work closely with CDB.”
The other aspect of the Small Business programme, Smith said, has to do with capacity building or providing training for small businesses. He said it is one thing to make sure that the funding facilities are available, but to access that funding, the lenders need to have some sort of assurance that small businesses have the capacity to be able to run their businesses efficiently. The courses will be done in conjunction with CDB.
“When you go into a lending facility, one of the things they look at is whether or not the business is able to carry out the functions of their business plan. We need to make sure that you are fully versed in what is in your business plan and that you are able to understand what is needed and can get it done.”
“It doesn’t mean that the facilities that we are providing are per say less stringent than the banks, of course there are liabilities on the Government’s part in the sense that if we are going to be guaranteeing a loan for a particular business,” said Smith noting the reasons for offering the training and made it clear that entrepreneurs cannot access funding without going through the courses.
The capacity building courses will cover topics such as managing cash flow, understanding balance sheets among others, but according to Mr. Smith, it will be done in simple terms to ensure they are easily understood by the small business owners.
Meanwhile, the advisory board for the Bureau has been constituted and sent to Cabinet.
.png)
.png)
.png)
Follow Us On
13 Responses to “OJ - Gov’t “dead serious” to see success of small businesses”