Business Development Ministry to provide more help for local entrepreneurs

This country’s export potential lies in the small business sector and the Ministry of Energy and Business Development plans to pull out all the stops to help the businesses reach their full export potential.

Minister Senator Lisa Cummins said with close to 90 per cent of Barbados’ market made up of micro, small and medium-sized businesses it means the sheer scale of export potential lies in these business categories.

“It is our commitment and our responsibility to ensuring that whether we are dealing with issues relating to trading and capacity-building, standards – including voluntary and mandatory standards for the local market, for the purpose of being able to access export markets is critical to the work that is being done in this ministry.”

She said the concentration must now be on scaling-up the small business, promoting in-category from micro to large-scale enterprises and then helping them all to be export market-ready at the highest level.

“Barbados being world-class must mean something and it must be standards-based and that’s where the work of the BNSI comes into play,” Cummins said.

The minister said once these steps are achieved, the country would then be in a position to earn additional foreign exchange, expand the scope and scale of business, create more employment opportunities and also diversify the products and services on offer.

In her contribution to the discussion, Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Business Development Sandra Husbands noted that the message of standards is relatively hidden from the public and some in business.

“If you can produce a product consistently at a high standard, you will get repeat business. It is as simple as that. Therefore, the economic growth, the expansion of our GDP really depends on our ability to inculcate quality standards into everything we do as Barbadians,” she said.

Husbands acknowledged that it would take cross-collaboration across ministries to make “quality” a national “good”.

Husbands added: “This means working with schools, enterprises, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Trade. And that collaboration is important to ensure that we can safely move the country to that place of excellence.” (SP)