CHIEF Executive Officer (CEO) of the Small Business Bureau (SBB), Dr. Lowell Porter has said that an issue with businesses in Guyana is that many business owners have only primary education.

Speaking at the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI)’s business forum held at the Pegasus Hotel on Saturday, Porter noted that there are many issues confronting the bureau.

“We have over 10,000 clients,” Porter shared while adding that there are a lot more persons and groups that benefit from training. Porter however bemoaned, “Most of our owners of businesses have primary education and that is also an issue.”

He shared statistics which showed that just over 400 persons have primary education; just over 300 have secondary education; more than 100 have tertiary while only about 50 have university education.

This is an issue, because without the necessary knowledge, persons may venture into a business and may be unable to manage it effectively, according to Porter.
For him, training is essential to the success of any venture because it provides the solid foundation needed to build the business upon. To this end, he noted that the development of small businesses or entrepreneurial ventures goes hand-in-hand with education, and according to him, it is better to start learning from as early as possible.

“We have belief that if you start early in Entrepreneurship, you start giving [potential business owners] that appetite to explore [and] to find something they wanna do,” Porter said. To this end, he shared that the bureau has an in-school programme where it works with children at the secondary level.

Dr. Porter shared a success story of one boy from Bartica who benefitted from the in-school training and was able to successfully establish a small business and though he is currently underage, he is working with the bureau until he is of the age to apply for a loan.

The SBB helps small business owners to gain knowledge through training programmes, but also fosters business to business networking, by matching businesses locally and internationally; facilitating expos and supporting the development of clusters.

Adding to Porter’s remarks was Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at the University of Guyana, Diana Gobin. She shared that she invested in a business that eventually failed because she did not apply entrepreneurial theory to her business management and that was her error. She overlooked the importance of components of business like a feasibility study and market research. Gobin posited that through education, you are able to learn a host of critical tenets required to develop and manage a business.