Brain Drain identified as limitation to small business development prospects

Sep 28, 2018 News

Guillermo Bolanos, an international and financial development consultant, has described Guyana’s brain drain as one of the major challenges preventing Guyana’s business sector from developing well enough to compete internationally.
He made this assessment at the Small Business Bureau (SBB)’s closing ceremony for MSED project, at Herdmanston Lodge, yesterday.
MSED is an acronym for ‘Micro and Small Development and Building Alternative Livelihoods for Vulnerable Groups’.
At the closing ceremony for this project, Bolanos spoke of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) fact book statistics, which states that 70% of Guyana’s university graduates migrate. This issue, he advised, needs special focus from the Ministry of Business and the government at large. Bolanos recommended that the SBB increase the reach of its grant schemes to low carbon, sustainable business strategies so that business graduates could take advantage of the opportunity to start businesses locally, instead of leaving for opportunities abroad.
Ms. Gillian Edwards, the SBB’s Credit Guarantee Fund manager, spoke on their US$5M project to provide grant-financing opportunities to Guyanese. The project, she explained, essentially split the costs into three areas.
Access to finance offered US$2.75M, and this fund enveloped their credit guarantee fund, low carbon grant scheme and other grant related finances. Business Development Services (US$1.47M) were funneled into the development of business management and technical skills, especially to build the capacities of younger grant recipients to succeed in their business endeavours.
Institutional Strengthening costs went to a tune of US$776.5M and were used to shore up the project’s bureaucracy.
The programmes targets were small businesses that generally have 25 employees or less, and make less than $60M in annual revenue. The marketing strategy for this project included community outreach programmes for rural and hinterland areas, media advertisements, social media marketing, cluster groups and a diverse range of other strategies for maximum penetration.
The bureau teamed up with GBTI, Republic Bank, Empretec, IPED and 12 trainers.
Even though the project has ended, Edwards indicated that the grant schemes are still available to prospective businesspersons. The project, essentially, was a pilot project for SBB to develop best practices for the expansion of their services.
The Small Business Bureau is a semi-autonomous Government agency formed to incentivize regimes and support programmes for small business.

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