Gov't to establish one-stop facility for micro, small businesses

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Jamaica Observer

Government is aiming to establish a one-stop facility to assist micro and small businesses, Minister of Industry, Investments and Commerce Karl Samuda has disclosed.

"We are planning to house all the activities that relate to areas within the small business group under one roof, under the responsibility of the Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC)," Samuda told Wednesday's post-Cabinet press briefing.

He noted that one of the immediate changes was the new name of the JBDC from the Jamaica Business Development Centre.
"So, what we plan to do is to have one organisation in which three fundamental elements of the support mechanism for micro and small business will be housed," he explained.

He said that a new feature of the JBDC will be the establishment of a financial centre.

"In that regard, I have instructed the permanent secretary to obtain a ruling from the Attorney General's Department on how we can collapse the self-start fund, MIDA, into a financing unit to grant loans to the micro and small business sector," Samuda said.

He noted that the Cabinet has already granted $150 million to the JBDC for a pilot project for this sector.

He said that the rules for loans from this facility will not be as rigid as traditional banking rules, and the collateral levels will be more flexible and will include intellectual property.

According to Samuda, one of the greatest challenges facing the micro and small business sector is access to capital. He, however, said that access to capital should not be looked at in isolation.

"Capital, through Self Start, has been wasted in the past. We are going to ensure that does not happen in the future," he said.
The JBDC will be so highly structured and so well managed and the monitoring process so intense, he said, that much greater success will be assured.

Samuda said that 80 per cent of small business failures were due to the lack of training, and one of the conditionalities of every loan will now be that the borrower undergo a training programme.

He said that they will also be encouraged to use the incubator facilities at the Garmex Free Zone.

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