Business

The Small Business Association of Jamaica (SBAJ) is to receive much-needed technical assistance from a Commonwealth Secretariat team, a London based multi-lateral inter-governmental agency which will see to the implementation of the small-business procurement policy, as well as put small businesses in a better position to attract funding from local financial institutions.

"The SBAJ is being assisted in issues of advocacy, including operationalising the affirmative government procurement policy and financing mechanism for Jamaican small businesses," said Dalma James, president of the SBAJ.

The government, in December 2008, as part of its stimulus package, announced that a system would be put in place that would allow small and micro businesses to benefit from 15 per cent of all government contracts.

Ministries, departments and agencies were asked to set aside 15 per cent of procurement under its recurrent and capital 'A' budget for micro and small businesses. Other public entities were also required to do the same with their procurement budget.

The maximum value of contracts to be awarded under the programme is $1 million for contracts relating to goods, $5 million for general services, and $10 million for works.

policy needed

James said that the SBAJ had been pushing for a long time to get the procurement policy in place.

But according to James, no machinery was in place to implement it. Now working with the SBAJ and the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, experts from the Common-wealth Secretariat will be working towards the implementation of the policy.

"They will work with the SBAJ to strengthen capacity, which will enable members to participate in terms of taking up government procurement con-tracts," said James.

"A machinery for small-businesses to better able to access finance will also be put in place," James further said, adding that the secretariat would also be working with the institutions to strengthen funding windows available to the sector.

"Most of the funds now available end up in the micro sector, you don't have a small-business pick-up, and there is no institution now carrying small-business loans that can be repaid over a two- to three-year period," said James.

"We need to look at this and what can be done to get institutions to operate in this area," James added.

The two-year project titled 'Assisting Jamaica's industry and commerce competitiveness' will deliver a series of capacity-building and inno-vative mechanisms aimed at fostering the competitiveness of individual enterprises across Jamaica.

The Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce will also be working closely with the secretariat in implementing a database, information techno-logy base benchmarking tools and networking enterprises across several sectors.

The total value of the technical support being provided to the sector is $25 million and is financed by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Ram Venuprasad, the commonwealth's enterprise deve-lopment adviser, met this week with Reginald Budhan, permanent secretary of the ministry, along with the SBAJ executive.

The team is expected to arrive in the island on June 22.