SMALL BARBADIAN BUSINESSES are getting technical assistance under a near US$1 million project funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

However, Commonwealth Secretariat advisor Ram Venuprasad has underscored the need for them to help themselves too by working together to produce and market goods.

Venuprasad said "the unwillingness to collaborate" was perhaps the biggest challenge small businesses in Barbados and other regional countries faced.

Without the economies of scale and the scope of the large competitors, small firms needed to cooperate more, he
told reporters.

Venuprasad is in Barbados in connection with the second phase of a US$900 000 Commonwealth technical assistance programme started in March 2005 and ending in 2009.

The first phase covered five countries – St Lucia , St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica – and the second involves Barbados, Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Strategy

"We are working on a micro, small and medium size strategy for Barbados, as well as reviewing the Small Business Act of the Government of Barbados, amongst other things," he said on Monday during a break in a training session at Grand Barbados Beach Resort.

"We hope that by the end of June a comprehensive strategy would be in place and the Small Business Act in Barbados also reviewed."

Minister of Trade, Industry and Commerce, George Hutson, told reporters the work of the Commonwealth Secretariat can guide Government policy and decision-making.

He said a number of small businesses had potential but they needed the capital and technical knowledge to break into the export market.

He mentioned small businesses producing body lotions and soaps.

He said that some of the more established manufacturers "should be able to enter into some joint venture arrangements with the smaller producers of these products and see how we can get them into the export market".
(TY)