Expo to offer lifeline to struggling companies

As micro and small businesses struggle to keep their doors open, the Ministry of Business Development has announced an initiative aimed at helping to bring them back from the brink.

On Tuesday, officials said a new business fair and expo, which will be hosted quarterly, has been designed to help businesses recover from the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Minister of Energy and Business Development Kerrie Symmonds said while the Government had provided some business interruption support to the sector in the form of cash, there was “a need for us to go further”.

“Sometimes the issue is not just simply the availability of money but that we have to start now to seriously assess the social and political responses that we have to the challenges facing this sector,” he said.

“My judgment is, historically, Barbados has approached this matter in a very limited way and part of the reopening of this economy must be the rethinking of the way we have done things traditionally, and the way in which we can make interventions which are more targeted and, perhaps, which are more useful above and beyond instinctive first response which is to throw money at a problem.”

Symmonds indicated that while the micro and small business sector represented over 80 per cent of businesses on the island, most of the concessions, tax holidays and facilitative arrangements have traditionally not been geared towards them.

“Therefore, we have to recognise there is a time, which I think has come for us now, to do things a little bit differently and to stand in the bridge in the interest of ensuring the equality of opportunity and equality of financial access and equality of treatment to the small and micro business sector,” the Minister said.

He said the new business fair and expo will do just that, creating a marketplace for those who have been dislocated as a result of the pandemic.

The first of those will be held on Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the grounds of the Warrens Office Complex, with some 26 businesses expected to be on display.

The event will also highlight all the agencies that fall under the Ministry of Energy and Business Development; agencies from other ministries relating to the business sector; as well as members of the Small Business Development Centre Network; and representatives from the private sector, including financial institutions.

Symmonds said he hoped the fair and expo would result in synergies and partnerships, as well as businesses coming to terms with the importance of being registered and “being part of the system formally”.

The initiative is the brainchild of Supervisor of Insolvency Esther Springer, who observed that the main cause of bankruptcy and insolvency in Barbados continued to be poor corporate governance, poor financial management, excessive borrowing, and bad or failed investments.

“There was a consistent thread in all of the businesses, which was the general lack of knowledge in the business environment as well as in relation to financial literacy,” she said.

“As part of our mandate, we are not only responsible for identifying the causes of bankruptcy and insolvency but also for developing policies and programmes which are aimed at addressing those causes and this is one of the initiatives that we conceptualised.”
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb