-to develop scope for potential business owners, young entrepreneurs

A COMBINED effort of the private and public sectors along with CUSO International has resulted in the launch of a business-incubation centre (business incubator), which is geared at creating the requisite environment for potential businesses.The newly signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Cuso International, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), the Small Business Bureau and private enterprise GeoTechVision Guyana will promote cooperation among the organisations to establish business incubation centres or business incubator, a release from CUSO noted.
The four organisations came together on Thursday to officially get Guyana’s first business incubator off the ground. In an official signing ceremony, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Business, Ms Rajdai Jagarnauth; President of the GCCI, Mr Vishnu Doerga; Managing-Director of GeoTechVision Guyana, Ms Valrie Grant; and Regional Programme Officer for Cuso International, Tariq Williams, agreed to engage in awareness campaigns, workshops, and competitions to help get the business incubator started.
“I feel very satisfied and pleased that this process is beginning. I would call the signing a beginning of things to come,” said Patsy Russell, a Cuso International volunteer, who is coordinator of the initiative through a placement at the GCCI.
“It’s a step closer to creating the environment required to help potential businesses to get the support they need,” Doerga agreed.
“In Guyana, for forever, we’ve ended up in a situation where companies had basically to become successful by trial and error,” he said, explaining that many had therefore fallen by the wayside, noting, “It is our intention to have this collaboration raise the level of success that aspiring entrepreneurs are able to achieve.”
Russell added that she felt a public-private partnership was the best way to establish the incubator, especially as the incubator plans to target “young entrepreneurs.”
“When a private-only incubator is developed in an economy like this — a developing economy with a high level of unemployment, especially among young people – a whole segment of the population is left out and will not be able to partake in this process,” Russell explained.
She explained, that “By having the private mixed with the public sector as well, more people can be involved in this process of entrepreneurship, and thereby reduce poverty, decrease unemployment and pave the road towards economic development in the country.”
A business incubator helps to develop start-up businesses and fledgling companies by providing them with targeted resources and services. It addresses many of the problems new businesses face, such as unaffordable workspaces, lack of access to finance or appropriate mentoring.
Permanent Secretary Jagarnauth said this initiative was an important one for Guyana.
“A large number of business persons are very small; also there are youths involved who are now trying to develop their entrepreneurial skills. And there may be many innovations coming from the youths and they want to give them that start,” he said.
Thursday’s signed agreement follows the seminar held at the beginning of June, which saw more than 150 small business-owners learn about business incubation from Caribbean and international experts, including GeoTechVision Guyana.
Last year, the World Bank Group InfoDev selected GeoTechVision as a business enabler to provide training and mentorship to other Guyanese companies.
“Being entrepreneurs ourselves and having gone through an incubator ourselves, we figured that this would be an ideal way to contribute to the ecosystem here in Guyana,” said Grant, GeoTechVision’s managing director, adding that being able to work with so many partners on the initiative was special for them.
“We recognise that it takes a village to raise entrepreneurs. We believe in this partnership and in collaborating, so that we can inevitably do what we’re supposed to do – help the entrepreneurs.”
This initiative is particularly important now, Russell said, given the recent world-class oil discovery off the coast of Guyana, especially for young entrepreneurs.