2010-04-12
Small Business Sector Urged to Hold Strain
MSME Alliance’s Annual General Meeting:
Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Hon. Karl Samuda (right), addressing the third annual general meeting of the MSME Alliance, at the Jamaica Trade and Invest’s Offices, Trafalgar Road on March 24.
Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Hon. Karl Samuda, is imploring entrepreneurs in the small business sector to continue to hold strain and have confidence that the economy will begin to thrive.
"It's difficult, but I just want to encourage you to feel confident not only in your ability to play your part and to grow your business, but to have confidence in your country. These difficult times will pass, and when they do, we are hoping as an administration to establish our economy on a real sustainable footing," Mr. Samuda said at the meeting of the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Alliance on March 24.
He told entrepreneurs, who attended the meeting held at Jamaica Trade and Invest's (JTI) Trafalgar Road headquarters that the government will not be pursuing a policy, "where we make things easy today by accumulating debt, but tomorrow the next generation has to pay for it and we suffer."
Noting that this type of policy is unsustainable, he stated that emphasis will be placed on productive enterprises, as the government seeks to regenerate a culture of industriousness."We have to try and encourage those in the productive sector to help us to work our way out of this. Those days of easy money, quite frankly, are over. It is over for the banks and it’s over for those customers who sit back and reap great dividends and do nothing," he stated.
In fact, Mr. Samuda said, this new approach will redound to the benefit of small business owners who are faced with the challenge of sourcing funds, as increased competition in the financial sector, will force banks to seek out such entrepreneurs.
"In order to sustain the level of administrative costs that they (banks) have to pay to run heir businesses, they will have to be more aggressive in their loan portfolios," he projected.
The MSME Alliance comprises more than 3,200 organisations and 300,000 MSME associations across sectors such as manufacturing, personal services, transportation, entertainment, agriculture, mining, and retailing.
The Alliance seeks to build meaningful partnerships and create strategic alliances and effective networking between existing business associations and their members.