Sto­ries by Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia

busi­ness re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee Scoon is hope­ful the amend­ments made to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Pro­cure­ment Act will make busi­ness eas­i­er for small busi­ness­es.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya yes­ter­day, Gopee-Scoon ex­plained that some of the amend­ments in the Act were made with SMEs in mind.

“In the first in­stance, they need to un­der­stand what is re­quired and I don’t want to speak out of turn. As you know there are amend­ments be­fore the par­lia­ment. We went to the Sen­ate on Thurs­day night and we stayed there un­til about close to 3 am Fri­day morn­ing. Amend­ments were made and it will have to go back to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives where we can ease the reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments for small busi­ness­es or not nec­es­sar­i­ly small but for pur­chas­es un­der a mil­lion dol­lars. But not too much about that, it has to go back to the House and we have to make sure it is passed,” said .

She how­ev­er stressed that busi­ness­es should do what they can to ful­ly un­der­stand the pro­cure­ment process which has been in­tro­duced.

Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings added the gov­ern­ment had been work­ing to im­prove the un­der­stand­ing of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment act among SMEs, while al­so pro­vid­ing a plat­form for these busi­ness­es to grow.

“On­ly this week, gov­ern­ment ap­proved a sum of $24 mil­lion as a sup­port pro­gramme for small and mi­cro busi­ness­es. It’s a grant pro­gramme we in­tend to af­fect at least 1,000 small busi­ness­es that way. This, of course, is a grant, not a loan. NED­CO will ad­min­is­ter the pro­gramme and we will in­clude in that pro­gramme some lev­el of men­tor­ship and train­ing for small busi­ness­es,” he said.

“I know that NED­CO has al­ready start­ed some ac­tiv­i­ty in that re­gard. They host­ed a we­bi­nar some time ago and they have in­di­cat­ed to me that they will do a fol­low up. There­fore if the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is do­ing the same thing, it ex­pands our reach with the abil­i­ty to as­sist small busi­ness­es.”

Gopee-Scoon said she was very im­pressed by the turnout at the event, which fea­tured over 350 ex­hibitors and 260 booths.

TTMA Pres­i­dent Roger Roach said he was ec­sta­t­ic about the turnout but not­ed there was work to be done among lo­cal busi­ness­es to ex­pand their reach.

“There is still a lot of room for growth right here in our Cari­com mar­kets. That is step one. Step two is that be­yond the Cari­com mar­ket, there is al­so the di­as­po­ra which is Caribbean peo­ple liv­ing abroad who are ac­cus­tomed to the taste, the feel, the flavour, the style of our prod­ucts and ser­vices

“So we are en­cour­aged to go there next. But we have large busi­ness­es here too and those busi­ness are en­cour­aged by the amount of in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers be­cause they are look­ing for ex­tra re­gion­al mar­kets,” he said.

The TIC clos­es to­day.