MINISTER of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Mr. Manniram Prashad, last Friday, inaugurated the Matching Grants Initiative (MGI) aimed at enhancing the capacity of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) export.

A section of the gathering at the launch ceremony last Friday.

He also handed over the reins of its governance to an eight-member public/private council at Guyana International Conference Centre, Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.

Those in charge are MGI Administrator, Ms. Taryn De Mendonca, Ms. Uchenna Gibson, Mr. Elton Patiram, Ms. Roxanne Reece, Mr. Nizam Hassan, Mr. Avalon Jagnandan, Mr. Lindel Harlequin and the Chairman, Mr. Yog Mahadeo.

The MGI is a Government of Guyana project being implemented through the National Competitiveness Strategy Unit (NCSU) and the Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce.

Funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), it is of 45 months duration, seeking to boost the competitiveness of SMEs to prepare them for export activity, including expansion.

It was designed to help enterprises participate consistently and profitably in the world market and, for the scheduled period, it has three phases, namely export readiness assessment, project preparation and project implementation.

The first is an investigation to ascertain what needs to be done in firms so each can better export performance and venture into the market successfully.

The second stage aims to advise participants on development of an associative project and the third is to implement the latter.

Manniram charged the governing body to partner with other financing agencies to benefit from advantages or networking and to keep the emergence of non-traditional sectors under review.

He said the initiative is a means through which more SMEs can grasp the opportunity to develop and grow.

TARGETS
De Mendonca said the MGI targets several eligible economic sectors, among them agro-processing, aquaculture, bio-ethanol, business process outsourcing, craft, eco-tourism and business tourism, non-traditional agriculture produce, organic food products and sustainable forest products.

She said, in those industries, eligible activities expected to clearly lead to export expansion and success are market research and testing, product and service innovation, market penetration, quality and environmental systems development, development of labelling and packaging, attendance at training programmes, benchmarking and reconfiguration of the value-chains.

De Mendonca explained that, aside from those activities, no part of the grant will facilitate a company spending on operating expenditure.

She said the grant limits are US$2,000 for phase one, US$1,500 to US$2,000 for phase two and US$25,000 to US$30,000 for phase three.

According to her, the outcomes are that participating companies would have achieved improvement in profitability and productivity, larger exporting volume and greater export intensity.

However, the MGI is only one element in the National Competitiveness Strategy (NCS). Mr. Jonathan Said, Senior Economist at the NCSU, identified sister projects as the Small Business Development Fund, Mutual Guarantee Fund, establishment of a credit bureau and Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP).

He said the NCS is a long term economic intervention for Guyana that fosters a public-private partnership approach to continually improve this country’s competitiveness and its economy.

Said asserted that the key elements to the development of the NCS are core policies that affect all sectors, targeting the traditional and diversification clusters with the potential for growth.

He noted that, among the overall anticipated benefits are improved business climate, infrastructure, support of human resources, mitigation of red tape, boost for exports, information and marketing, creation of attractions for investment and provision of adequate access to financing.