2 months ago
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A splinter group that formed a trade association as champion for its own cause is now eyeing a return to the Small Business Association of Jamaica, but the newly installed SBAJ president has rejected the notion, saying it won’t happen under his watch.
Thirteen years ago, the MSME Alliance arose out of the SBAJ, representing a subset of small businesses generally classified as MSMEs, or micro, small and medium enterprises. The two entities have a similar mandate of advocacy for the small business sector, but the breakaway group desired greater focus on issues its members saw as peculiar to their circumstance.
Garnett Reid, who was recently elected president of the 50-year-old SBAJ, said he will focus on building on the legacy of previous leaders of the association to lobby for better conditions of doing business for the estimated 422,000 registered small businesses in the country.
However, Reid was categorically against the MSME Alliance returning to the SBAJ fold. His rebuff of the group comes even though the president of the alliance, Donovan Wignall, is the treasurer on the new SBAJ executive, which has been elected to serve for two years.
“A merger is not on the cards right now. The MSME Alliance is a breakaway group of the SBAJ. That will not happen under my leadership, I’m sorry,” Reid said in an interview with the Financial Gleaner.
He was reacting to a question on whether a merger was possible. That question was put to him after Wignall said, in a separate interview last week, that the objectives of the MSME Alliance could be achieved under the umbrella of the SBAJ, and that he was open to the two bodies uniting in the future.
Wignall said there was no conflict of interest in him being on the executive of the SBAJ while also being the head of the MSME Alliance. He doesn’t plan to seek re-election as president of the alliance.
“Our objective is to merge both organisations, as they have the same objectives in mind. We have been trying to amalgamate the two organisations for a while, and I have been on the SBAJ executive for the past two years,” said Wignall.
“It is my view, and the view of the last three presidents (of the MSME Alliance), that bringing the two associations together would make our mission more efficient,” he said.
Providing the background to the MSME Alliance that was founded 13 years ago, Wignall said the organisation’s founding president, Dr Rosalea Hamilton, felt that “what she was trying to achieve couldn’t be achieved within the structure of the SBAJ at the time”.
SBAJ provides training for members and lobbies persistently for equitable access to capital, amid other issues that bedevil small businesses and entrepreneurs in Jamaica.
SBAJ Second Vice-President Dennise Williams said the organisation has strong relationships with institutions such the Ministry of Industry, Investments and Commerce, the Bank of Jamaica, Development Bank of Jamaica, EXIM Bank, and other financial institutions.
“Some of the critical challenges facing small businesses include access to funding and high interest rates. Many of our members have been penalised by high interest rates and inflation, which has damaged their credit rating and made them vulnerable,” Williams said.
“Some financial institutions are working to make opening bank accounts easier at the consumer level, but not at the business level. Opening a bank account is the same for a small business as it is for a multinational company like GraceKennedy,” she added.
For the new SBAJ administration, its training agenda will include e-commerce and artificial intelligence.
The members of the SBAJ executive include Reid, Williams, Wignall, First Vice-President Norman Grant, Secretary Kevin Frith, Assistant Secretary Fred Manderson, Assistant Treasurer Leon Robinson and Immediate Past President Michael Leckie.
Wignall said on Wednesday that he will be stepping down as head of the MSME Alliance at its next annual general meeting, tentatively scheduled for October.
There were persons ready to serve as his replacement when he steps down, he said.
“On paper we have 35 organisations in the Alliance, many of which are dormant. There are about 60 to 70 individual members who we regularly communicate with,” he said.
The membership of the SBAJ and MSME Alliance do not overlap. Wignall is the exception, Reid said on Wednesday.
Moreover, he is against any other MSME Alliance member joining the SBAJ membership at this time.
“The only one reason Mr Wignall is there is because he was there a long time ago, and he met with the trustees [of the SBAJ] and they approved his membership,” Reid said.
“You can’t have an organisation operating within an organisation,” he said, while noting that he intended to discuss the matter further with Wignall.
Commenting on Reid’s strong stance against the merger of the two organisations, Wignall said he would respect the president’s viewpoint.
“Garnett is the president, and the president speaks for the organisation, and if that is his opinion then we just have to respect it. But it (the merger) was something that was in the cards during previous years under the last three SBAJ presidents,” he said in a follow-up interview with the Financial Gleaner.
“To my mind, unity is strength, and I do not see our organisation as a competing organisation to the SBAJ. But President Garnet is there and I will be supporting him in whatever plans he has for the sector.”
As for the MSME Alliance’s achievements over its 13-year history, Wignall said they are not easily measured or quantified.
“While we are unable to catalogue and say we have built this building or we were able to get funding for X number of businesses, we have done a lot of work where the banking sector is concerned, where interaction with government agencies and departments are concerned, such as with the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, the Bank of Jamaica, and the Bureau of Standards,” he said.
“We were part of the process of getting the MSME and Entrepreneurship Policy promulgated and passed in Parliament. Our achievements can be looked at in how MSMEs are treated and recognised; and so, while we don’t have the resources to build edifices and to go to court and fight, we have a big mouth and strength of numbers,” Wignall said.
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