Bill an asset to small business owners

Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment, Marsha Caddle, has hailed the new Liquor Licences Bill as an asset for small businesspersons.

Caddle told the Lower House recently that the 2021 Bill, which is set to modernise the system for the issuing of liquor licences, will make life easier for shop owners, for example, who would have spent several productive hours carrying out the previous time-consuming process. She said that “time is money”.

“The reason that we concern ourselves with this ease of doing business work is not primarily to be able to facilitate ‘big business’. Larger companies tend to have the wherewithal; the resources, the time, and the energy to navigate complex systems – they are able to hire lawyers and others. But a man who is trying to run a shop, for example, has fewer resources to be running all about the place, and to try and navigate systems that are too complicated.

“And so, the real value in being able to do this work and deliver on something like a new Liquor Licence Bill that is going to simplify things – is to be able to give clarity and predictability to regular Barbadians. To people who live and work here from Carrington Village and Flagstaff and Clapham and Brittons Hill…,” she pointed out.

“We say that ‘time is money’, but it is absolutely true and the fact is, that those among us who have fewer resources in terms of money, also have less time.”

Minister Caddle also reminded the House that the National Digital ID, soon to be rolled out, is critical because it has the capacity to be able to facilitate payment transfers, lessening the need for people to go line up.

“So that those people who would normally be going and lining up could now have more hours of work... This is an ecosystem of opportunity that we are creating because the time that is saved by applying online for a passport, police certificate of character or liquor licence means that you can now put that time into so many other productive things that you once did not have the

opportunity to do.

“And I know that this Bill is going to make a tremendous difference for so many people in our communities,” she further expressed.

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