Recent oil find spurs introduction of business incubator – public-private partners ink agreement to collaborate

Aug 13, 2016 News

---

Guyana recent oil find has provoked interest in many factions, particularly the business community. It is already anticipated that the discovery will result in a number of spin-off businesses being formed. And it is expected that many young entrepreneurs will be taking advantage of this phenomenon.
This is according to Patsy Russell, a CUSO International Volunteer, who is coordinating a business incubator initiative that is geared at targeting young entrepreneurs.
“We have got to be ready to take advantage of all of that business-flow… entrepreneurship that will be coming, because if we are not ready other people will definitely come in,” Russell recently asserted.
In this regard, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between development organization Cuso International, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Small Business Bureau and private enterprise GeoTechVision Guyana, to promote cooperation between the organizations to establish a business incubation centre or business incubator.
The four organisations came together last week Thursday to officially get Guyana’s first business incubator off the ground.
In an official signing ceremony, Ms. Rajdai Jagarnauth, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Business; Mr. Vishnu Doerga, President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI); Ms. Valrie Grant, Managing Director of GeoTechVision Guyana and Tariq Williams, Regional Programme Officer for Cuso International, agreed to come together to engage in awareness campaigns, workshops, and competitions to help to get Guyana’s first business incubator started.
“I feel very satisfied and pleased that this process is beginning. I would call the signing a beginning of things to come,” said Russell, who is the Coordinator of the initiative through a placement at GCCI.
Russell added that she felt a public-private partnership was the best way to establish the incubator, especially as the incubator plans to target young entrepreneurs.
“When you do a private [only] incubator in an economy like this– a developing economy with a high level of unemployment, especially among young people, a whole segment of the population is left out and will not be able to partake in this process,” Russell explained.
“So by having the private mixed with the public sector as well, more people can be involved in this process of entrepreneurship, and thereby reduce poverty, decrease unemployment, and pave the road towards economic development in the country.”
The GCCI President agreed, “It’s a step closer to creating the environment required to help up and coming businesses to get the support they need.”
“In Guyana, for forever, we’ve ended up in a situation where companies had basically to become successful by trial and error,” he said, explaining that many had therefore fallen by the wayside. “It is our intention to have this collaboration raise the level of success that aspiring entrepreneurs are able to achieve.”
A business incubator helps to develop start-up businesses and fledging companies by providing them with targeted resources and services. It addresses many of the problems new businesses face, such as unaffordable workspaces, lack of access to finance or appropriate mentoring.
Permanent Secretary Jagarnauth said, this initiative was an important one for Guyana. According to Jagarnauth, this move is important because Guyana has a small economy that is now being developed.
“A large number of our business persons are very small; also we have youth involved that are now trying to develop their entrepreneurial skills. There may be many innovations coming from the youth and we want to give them that start,” Jagarnauth stressed.
The signed agreement follows a successful seminar at the beginning of June that saw more than 150 small business owners being sensitized about business incubation from Caribbean and international experts.
One of those experts is collaborating partner, GeoTechVision Guyana. Last year, the World Bank Group InfoDev selected GeoTechVision as a business enabler to provide training and mentorship to other Guyanese companies.
“Being entrepreneurs ourselves and having gone through an incubator ourselves, we figured that this would be an ideal way to contribute to the ecosystem here in Guyana,” said Grant, GeoTechVision’s Managing Director. She said that being able to work with so many partners on the initiative was special.
“We recognize that it takes a village to raise entrepreneurs. We believe in this partnership and in collaborating so that we can inevitably do what we’re supposed to do – help the entrepreneurs.”

---

---