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Bahamas Development Bank Holds One-Day Leadership Forum To Assess Funding And Support For Small Businesses
As a part of the Bahamas Development Bank’s (BDB) and the Ministry of Finance’s on going efforts to assess the best options and models to effectively finance, promote, and sustain the development of small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in the country, the BDB recently hosted a one-day Leadership Forum on small business development at the British Colonial Hilton on February 3, 2011.
Visionary Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs Awards Conference
Hundreds of business owners and entrepreneurs expected to attend this year’s 2010 Visionary Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs Awards Conference slated for Monday, October 18 at 9 a.m. at the British Colonial Hilton are being encouraged to adopt an aggressive survival mentality in order to ensure their businesses’ ultimate success during these challenging economic times.
Govt Programme will Allow Businesses to Customise Benefits
Eligible businesses will be allowed to customize their benefits under the government’s Road Work Compensation Programme, according to Ministry of Finance executive Simon Wilson.
Govt Programme Will Allow Businesses To Customise Benefits
Eligible businesses will be allowed to customize their benefits under the government's Road Work Compensation Programme, according to Ministry of Finance executive Simon Wilson.
Boost Small Business to Grow Economy
Faced with a growingly stagnant small and medium business environment, UK Chancellor George Osborne recently made available $60 billion to revive this sector.
Business Builders Immersion Cultivates Young Entrepreneurs
On March 3rd, 2012 the third annual Business Builders Immersion conference will be held at the Sheraton Nassau Beach Resort. The purpose of the conference is to aid in the birth and development of Bahamian entrepreneurs.
Christie's Quandary
While Prime Minister Perry Christie and his administration have 'no horse in the race' on the approaching gambling referendum, they are, quite frankly, in a tight spot on the issue, with more questions than answers following his recent communication to Parliament.
Landfill Coalition Crafts 100M Proposal
A landfill coalition has hired consultants from the UK to revamp the dump in New Providence and establish a waste-to-energy program.
Eleuthera forms Chamber of Commerce
Eleuthera has been granted its own Chamber of Commerce, which will change the way the island - and indeed the country - conducts business.
Thomas Sands, a prominent entrepreneur on the island - with interests in retail, property, insurance and tourism - takes up the post of president.
He told Guardian Business the paperwork has been approved to become a legal, incorporated entity.
"We questioned the viability of acting as a club versus an incorporated Chamber that is recognized throughout The Bahamas and the world," Sands added.
"It was important, going forward, to legitimize the organization prior to establishing membership or activities. We will now have influence over our own economy and communication with any developments that may take place."
However, it took a lot of hard work to get to this point, he said.
In July 2010, Guardian Business reported that executives announced their intention to launch a Chamber of Commerce for Eleuthera.
Since then, hundreds of discussions, memos and proposals have taken place.
With the approval now in place, the next task is to develop the membership, which will include business owners, stakeholders and individuals of influence on the island.
Elizabeth Byron, the editor and owner of 'The Eleutheran', will serve as vice president.
Unlike some other Chamber of Commerce entities in the Family Islands, Sands said making the organization incorporated gives it real teeth when dealing with the government.
In other words, it is expected to have significant clout in all future business dealings on the island.
Winston Rolle, the Chairman of The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employer Confederation (BCCEC), told Guardian Business that, in the past, there was only one real economic center in the country.
That, however, has changed over the years as the islands develop industry and work to address their specific needs.
He believes the Eleuthera Chamber of Commerce will only strengthen business in The Bahamas.
"The way we see it, while we are focused on things in New Providence, we can now focus on the more macro items - the things that affect us as a country, and that shall facilitate business as a whole," he said.
"We envision other chambers will provide focus on issues in their areas, and we can leverage and exchange resources, training and contacts.
"We want a better relationship with our Family Island chambers."
For example, Rolle pointed out that this week, in collaboration with the International Labour Organization, the BCCEC has put on a free training seminar for aspiring entrepreneurs in Grand Bahama.
The 40-hour training program at the Sunrise Resort and Marina is giving participants access to top business and financial consultants.
"The idea is to have a partnering relationship and leverage our resources," he added.
Accessing these resources is a top priority for Sands, he told Guardian Business, and it should be on the agenda for their first meeting in the next 30 days.
Sands said he would like to establish more educational programs with the BCCEC and be involved in the small-to-medium-sized business legislation currently being worked on in New Providence.
The hurricane, he said, has set them back somewhat in terms of progress, and businesses need time to get "their priorities sorted out" before turning attention to the new chamber. Other issues on the agenda will be tackling the tourism challenges faced by Eleuthera, with a focus on improving the number of flights and increasing the island's overall exposure in the market.
But Sands felt the most important function of the new chamber is communication.
"We have spoken a lot about communication between developers and business," he said. "There is a sense of working together to develop the island and eliminating the idea that people do their own thing and feeling threatened. That dialogue is a priority."
He said, at first, progress will be slow as they gather momentum. The most important thing is Eleuthera now has a united, legal voice.
"It will make business more efficient," Rolle agreed.
"All of the islands have their uniqueness. I would not try to sit in New Providence and indicate what is going on in Exuma or Eleuthera. But that doesn't preclude us from working together and forming a better relationship."
CARICOM: Doing the dragon dance
On February 9, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Dr. Ralph Gonsalves wrote a robust letter to the secretary-general of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Irwin LaRocque, pointing out the deep malaise in which the regional integration project is mired. His letter was copied to all CARICOM heads of government.
He did not spare the leadership of CARICOM, including himself, in asserting that a decision, taken by leaders at a retreat in Guyana last year, putting the integration process on "pause" was a mistake. He made the telling point that "pause" in a dynamic world is "a euphemism for standing still".
Touring the critical areas in which CARICOM was underperforming or not performing at all, Gonsalves identified weak governance of CARICOM and the failure to implement decisions as the two most critical issues facing the regional movement.
On these issues, he said: "The informed public has grown weary and cynical of CARICOM's efforts on this and other vital matters. Yet the dragon's dance continues. We must be decisive on this, urgently."
The prime minister is a senior statesman in CARICOM. With the exception only of the prime minister of St. Kitts-Nevis, Dr. Denzil Douglas, he has been at the helm of CARICOM longer than any of his colleagues. He also has deep involvement in the region as an academic and an analyst.
It was not an unreasonable expectation, therefore, that in the wake of his very public letter, heads of government, at their meeting in Suriname on March 8 and 9, would have shed the cloak of denial that CARICOM is not in crisis; accepted publicly that urgent action is necessary and announced tangible measures to move forward.
That did not occur.
It could be that Gonsalves' view was heard and did receive support, but that the leaders have decided to make no collective announcements to their people until they have had a chance to consider the way forward, including how to fund it.
For sure, few governments in the region - many of them burdened by heavy and unsustainable debt - have much money to contribute to an enhanced CARICOM Secretariat and a new program of action.
It would have been encouraging to hear that heads had mandated the ministerial councils of CARICOM to examine all the mandates and work program of the secretariat and to retire all except the ones that would convey benefits to the Caribbean people and are deliverable over the next five to seven years.
Instead, heads declared that "the integration movement has continued to make great strides ever since the signing of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas" - a point that would not find great echoes of support within the region and outside it.
Many Caribbean businesspeople are bedeviled every day by the continuing bureaucracy that delays, if not prohibits, the movement of their goods from one CARICOM country to another.
Caribbean people also continue to face obstacles to the right of establishment even when they qualify for freedom of movement in the categories identified in the Revised Treaty.
The lack of regional transportation continues to adversely affect the transportation of goods within CARICOM, and if any attention is being paid to this serious problem, it is being done by one country with the seeming intention of controlling it from a nationalistic position. The case in point is the glaringly unfair competition that subsidized fuel gives to the Trinidad and Tobago airline, Caribbean Airlines Ltd. (CAL), and now to a ferry that will ply from Trinidad to some Eastern Caribbean countries and Barbados.
Food security remains unaddressed even as the cost of importing food escalates for every country, and some CARICOM countries such as Guyana, Belize and Dominica dump food that could feed the region, keeping foreign exchange within the area.
A region-wide plan for regional energy security utilizing regionally-produced hydro-electricity, solar energy, geo-thermal energy and oil and gas also continues to be elusive.
The heads told the public that, in Suriname, they considered, in-depth, the recommendations of a report carried out by independent consultants on re-structuring CARICOM.
They said "the secretary-general would begin the process of restructuring of the secretariat through the recruitment of a change facilitator to support him in that exercise and the strengthening of the corporate functions in the first instance" and "in a parallel exercise, the Bureau of Conference would work with an internal group from the secretariat to facilitate improving regional governance and implementation".
On the matter of regional governance and implementation, this would be the fourth (or maybe the fifth) attempt since 1992 to deal with the issue. Therefore, Caribbean people would be forgiven for harboring no high expectation of its success, especially as once again it is the "bureau" (three heads of government with no authority to make decisions for the others) that will oversee it.
Gonsalves had warned in his defining letter of February 9 that if CARICOM continues to slide backwards, some member countries will seek alliances elsewhere, weakening CARICOM.
Still, it has to be hoped that the decisions to "begin the process of restructuring the secretariat" and "to facilitate improving regional governance and implementation" are signs that more radical and fundamental reforms will be implemented.
The vital work is the five-year strategic plan that the secretary-general is expected to produce by the next CARICOM Summit in July. That plan should be the framework that guides a coordinated regional response to the current malaise of weak growth, high debt, stagnating incomes and rising unemployment.
If that is not what is on the cards, then the scramble for what are perceived to be benefits will accelerate through alliances with groups other than CARICOM - what the independent consultants report has described as "voting with their feet".
Then where will be the identity, culture and independence of the CARICOM people?
o Sir Ronald Sanders is a business executive and former Caribbean diplomat who publishes widely on small states in the global community.
Printed with the permission of caribbeannewsnow.com.
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