THE Small Business Bureau (SBB) within the Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce is poised to hold its first-ever Grant Awards & Partnership ceremony today.Chief Executive Officer of the SBB, Derrick Cummings, related his pleasure in announcing that the SBB has made tremendous strides in fulfilling its mandate as set out in the Small Business Act No. 2 of 2004.

He noted that this event- the first of its kind- marks a significant milestone in Government’s contribution to the small business sector. The Government of Guyana, via the Low Carbon Development Strategy/Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (LCDS/GRIF) facility has made available to the SBB the sum of US$10M to be utilised over a period of four years for the purpose of funding and comprehensive training of small business entrepreneurs.
According to Cummings, the Micro and Small Enterprise (MSE) Development and Building Alternative Livelihoods for Vulnerable Groups Project, which was launched in October 2013, has been crafted to enable the best utilisation of the funds. The project is administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and is monitored by the Ministry of Finance with oversight by Office of the President, and executed by the SBB.
A mutual guarantee fund and training component are disbursed through the Partner Financial Institutions and Partner Training Institutions respectively. He noted that the SBB directly administers a grant scheme to deserving recipients.
“To date, over 900 clients have accessed training and 18 have benefited from the low interest of 6% per annum, with the mutual guarantee facility to the tune of over $90M,” he said. It was added that more than 60 grants of approximately G$20M have been approved for disbursement and 167 jobs have been created and sustained as a result of this intervention.
The Grant Awards & Partnership Ceremony will start at 9:30 a.m. at the Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC) to demonstrate this achievement. The SBB functions as the executing agency of the Act and secretariat of the SBB.