An AI action plan for business

Small Business Week (SBW) 2025 has started, and similar to previous years, the theme for this year’s week of activities is expected to inform national conversations, influence policy decisions, and key development programmes for the small business sector.

Navigating Business in the Age of AI and Digital Trade portends a strategic conversation on where business is today and what should be the response to the pervasiveness of artificial intelligence. Business owners, policymakers and leaders in the small business ecosystem can ill afford to ignore the disruptive nature of generative AI on the business landscape.

SBW is known to have had some wins in the past. The recently launched Junior Stock Exchange project was a product of the 2019 SBW action plan. Several agencies pursued digitalisation interventions following the 2020 and 2021 week of activities, which elevated the use of technology in business at the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the 2022 State of the Sector conference, during that year’s week of activities, the then Minister of Innovation, Science & Technology was challenged with addressing the issue of geo blocking, due to the impediments by small firms in trading their goods and services on major platforms such as Google, Facebook and YouTube.

SBW has evidently provided a platform for national discourse on the issues affecting the sector and the action plans needed to address these issues. This year will be no different. The small business community therefore welcomes the ideas posited by the Minister of Energy and Business and the clarion call made for stakeholders to coalesce around a set of innovative, timely and relevant solutions to enable small and medium enterprises to maximise the current opportunities of AI.

The following represents a summary of the proposals posited by Senator Lisa Cummins:

These are the things that we need to be able to deliver as policy implementation activities. We need to build digital guardrails. We need to write the rules of digital trade for Barbados, including championing a CARICOM digital trade chapter, which allows us to harmonise e-signatures, e-invoicing, consumer protection, and data flows. We need to advocate for SME carve-outs in World Trade Organisation negotiations so that global rules reflect small economy realities. We need to be able to publish a Barbados AI starter rule book, to help guide SMEs map European Union in particular, because we have an economic partnership agreement, and we trade a lot with Europe. An EU AI Act compliance timeline for our exporters to launch with our business community, to go beyond sponsorship, to be launched with our business community an AI skill’s voucher scheme to subsidise MSME upscaling.

We need also with our financing partners to establish a Barbados digital SME fund, blending grants and concessional loans, offering tax credits to businesses investing in approved digital solutions. For policymakers, we need to build the infrastructure. We need to work on harmonising the regional rules, to pair governance with enablement and not with frustration. For the business sector, we need to open supply chains to SMEs. We need to pay small suppliers promptly, governments too. We need to provide mentorship and co-fund training. For technology partners, we need to design affordable, small island-ready tools, train entrepreneurs in AI and e-commerce, ensure transferability, transparency, and interoperability. For the small business community, digitise one process at a time. We’ve established it’s overwhelming. We cannot do it all at once. Use AI responsibly as a co-pilot, but not as a replacement. Expand into regional markets before scaling globally.

For the Small Business Association, be the digital navigator, provide guidance, curate a trusted vendor list, run a digital help desk to support the community. Champion training, partner with universities and tech firms to deliver AI and digital literacy workshops; represent SME voices in those CARICOM and WTO spaces where we need to have an advocate. Facilitate finance, and we commit to doing so on our part from the ministry’s side, in particular with regards to Fund Access and Trust Loans. Connect members to the digital SME fund once it is established and mentor access to concessional loans. Promote regional collaboration. Build a Caribbean SME knowledge network with sister associations and make that global.

For the Caribbean with the right digital rails, modern trade rules and scales, Caribbean SMEs can expand exports, energise our creative industries to tell our stories, drive regional integration, build businesses, create generational wealth that we pass on to those who come behind us. But without action, SMEs will continue to face compliance costs that they cannot meet, connectivity gaps that they cannot bridge, payment frictions that they cannot overcome. We cannot wait for that to change, we have to either change it or lead it, but those are our only two options.

The road is not waiting for us; AI and digital trade are rewriting the rules of business in real time. This is our moment to act, the government under the Ministry of Energy and Business will lay that rails and help to write the rules. We will advocate with you. We will open the doors to ensure that you are sitting at all the right tables, alongside us as stakeholder partners.

Businesses you need to open the doors and mentor SMEs.

Technology partners need to adopt the solutions that meet our realities.

Entrepreneurs you will need to continue to innovate boldly.

The SBA needs to guide, train, and advocate for SMEs every step of the way.

If we work together, Barbados and the Caribbean will not simply participate in this space, we have the ability to lead it.

We anticipate that following the several speeches, discussions and engagement, SME stakeholders will be emboldened to adopt these and other ideas to maximise the potential of AI. As in previous development periods, new technologies present new opportunities for growth and innovation. These opportunities must not be missed.