Empowering the MSME sector

A Government Minister is of the view that enough was not done to empower and to stimulate growth within Barbados’ micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector over the last decade.

“We had persons with wonderful ideas sitting at home. All our entrepreneurs needed was a little helping hand; all they needed was a little guidance to allow them to access finance in this country,” Minister of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce, Dwight Sutherland declared.

“And that is why growth has plummeted not because only of investment coming into this country, but because that critical sector that is instrumental in terms of building out the social and economic landscape in this country – there was a dearth over the last decade.”

His comments came during the debate on the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for his ministry on Monday evening at the Worthing Corporate Centre.

To remedy this, he reminded the Lower Chamber that when the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) took up office in 2018, one of the first announcements was the creation of Trust Loans for all Barbadians who are engaged in, or seeking to engage in legitimate entrepreneurial business activity.

Minister Sutherland reported that thus far the programme has gone “extremely well”.

“While Fund Access started in 1998, we came in 2018 and provided seed capital for those small and micro businesses who have tremendous ideas, the skills, and what it takes to indeed build out this sector; the only thing they were lacking is financing.

“Some six months after we came to office, we launched the Trust Fund to provide seed capital to up to $5,000 to these micro and small businesses. That programme has gone extremely well… We have started to see the benefits as over 2,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs have accessed that funding,” he said. (TL)

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