DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO) is not ful­ly equipped to ful­fil the needs of the small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), says Claire Mitchell-Du­mas, the new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of NED­CO. "With­out a CEO for two years, lim­it­ed qual­i­fied staff and a lack of fi­nan­cial re­sources, it proved very chal­leng­ing for the com­pa­ny to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port for the sec­tor," she said.

"There­fore it was not equipped to ful­fil the needs of the peo­ple," she added. Mitchell-Du­mas, who was se­lect­ed as CEO through an in­ter­view process in May, was speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on Fri­day.

She said it was im­por­tant for the com­pa­ny to in­crease its ca­pac­i­ty be­cause it was still very rel­e­vant and es­sen­tial to the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment. She not­ed that the cul­ture was chang­ing as more peo­ple were ris­ing to the chal­lenge and be­ing cre­ative. "We have a re­al di­ver­si­ty of re­quest...more peo­ple are go­ing in­to mu­sic arts and cul­ture," she said. There­fore, Mitchell-Du­mas said the com­pa­ny was seek­ing to im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary steps to im­prove its ca­pac­i­ty. She not­ed that with her ex­pe­ri­ence, suf­fi­cient re­sources and qual­i­fied staff, the com­pa­ny can prove it­self to be very ef­fec­tive.

Chal­lenges

Notwith­stand­ing that, Mitchell-Du­mas said it was up to the present Gov­ern­ment to re­al­ly fa­cil­i­tate the process be­cause the com­pa­ny has been faced with a num­ber of chal­lenges.

De­scrib­ing it as a work in progress, she said the com­pa­ny was not ful­ly staffed as it was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a high rate of at­tri­tion. This, she ex­plained, was due to Ned­co's in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide at­trac­tive re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages to keep qual­i­fied per­son­nel. She said the com­pa­ny was al­so with­out a CEO for two years. Con­se­quent­ly, Lloyd Year­wood, the com­pa­ny's di­rec­tor of fi­nance al­so act­ed as the CEO pri­or to her re­cruit­ment, she said. Mitchell-Du­mas said it prob­a­bly was quite chal­leng­ing for Year­wood as the two port­fo­lios re­quired dif­fer­ent skill sets.

"But it has been dif­fi­cult for the or­gan­i­sa­tion to at­tract and keep qual­i­fied per­son­nel. The small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es need us, so we have to de­liv­er the qual­i­ty to sup­port the growth of the sec­tor," she said. "We need to go all the way and make it work," she added. She not­ed that the com­pa­ny had been ac­cused of its bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tem and of not be­ing re­spon­sive enough to re­quests by po­ten­tial clients.

An­oth­er is­sue she not­ed was NED­CO's in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide ad­e­quate fund­ing to en­tre­pre­neurs. But this in it­self, she said, had its own chal­lenges be­cause on­ly about one busi­ness in every 15 suc­ceed­ed. "How­ev­er, even though this is so, un­like oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions we take a chance on all 15," Mitchell-Du­mas said.

A new NED­CO

In sig­nalling to the pub­lic to ex­pect a new NED­CO in the near fu­ture, Mitchell-Du­mas said, "Un­der new lead­er­ship, change has come." She worked for ten years in an or­gan­i­sa­tion called Neigh­bour­hood Hous­ing Ser­vice of Stat­en Is­land in New York, which is sim­i­lar to NED­CO and she feels her ex­pe­ri­ence will be a bonus to the lo­cal com­pa­ny. She added that while at NED­CO, she was al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems sim­i­lar to those at her pre­vi­ous work­place. As a re­sult, NED­CO, is in process of im­ple­ment­ing cer­tain process­es, some of which she said in­clud­ed im­prov­ing their pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures, pro­vid­ing train­ing in cus­tomer ser­vice and af­ter-care and putting struc­tures in place to close loans with­in two weeks.

Mitchell-Du­mas said the com­pa­ny would be es­tab­lish­ing a stake­hold­ers' com­mit­tee that would pro­vide feed­back that would en­able the ex­ec­u­tive team to man­age its re­sources more ef­fec­tive­ly. She said the com­pa­ny al­so need­ed to pro­vide bet­ter qual­i­ty loans with built-in in­cen­tives to ser­vice the bor­row­ing. "We must make our cus­tomers an­swer­able to their loans as an en­cour­age­ment to re­pay it; for ex­am­ple by tak­ing col­lat­er­al items if the loans are not re­paid," Mitchell-Du­mas said. She not­ed that these bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs must come with a fea­si­ble and work­able busi­ness plan.

Im­por­tance of SMEs

Mitchell-Du­mas said it was im­por­tant for the Gov­ern­ment to in­vest in this sec­tor as SMEs ac­count for the next largest sec­tor af­ter oil and gas. She said it was al­so the way for­ward in or­der to sur­vive this eco­nom­ic down­turn. "If we ig­nore the SMEs, there would be a hole left in the econ­o­my.

"They play a part in every­thing... they are the salt of all that meat. They are the nec­es­sary in­gre­di­ent in all that we do, so we can­not ne­glect them," she said.

She added that since the big busi­ness­es were not look­ing at small con­tracts, then the SMEs were quite need­ed. Mitchell-Du­mas not­ed that while the com­pa­ny ap­proved to lend up to $750,000, the for­mal process had not been hand­ed down as yet. How­ev­er, she ex­pressed the con­cern about the amount of mon­ey the Gov­ern­ment would al­lo­cate to the com­pa­ny es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lat­ed to ap­proval for the re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age for key peo­ple. But Mitchell-Du­mas said the Min­is­ter of Labour Er­rol Mc leod met with all agen­cies un­der his min­istry and in an ad­dress to NED­CO's se­nior man­age­ment team, he re­as­sured the group that he would do his best to rec­ti­fy their prob­lems.

Sta­tus

Ac­cord­ing to a NED­CO re­port, the amount of mon­ey the com­pa­ny has lent to its cus­tomers has de­clined be­tween 2008 and 2010. How­ev­er, the sec­tor that has been re­ceiv­ing the great­est at­ten­tion was the re­tail ser­vices fol­lowed by cloth­ing, then ser­vice/pro­duc­tion/se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and mi­ni mart and gro­ceries items. In 2008 in the re­tail sec­tor, there was a great de­crease of loan amounts from $7,724,058.81 to $922,426.60. For the cloth­ing sec­tor, it de­creased from $1,776,572.46 to $739,565.40.

It went down from $4,310,497.78 to $639,827.75 in the ser­vice / pro­duc­tion / se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices. For mi­ni mart/gro­cery items, it de­creased from $2,366,594.26 to $590,976.57.

Oth­er loan type ar­eas in­clude au­to care ser­vices, land­scap­ing/yard/ jan­i­to­r­i­al/main­te­nance/agri­cul­ture sup­plies/com­put­er & cel­lu­lar ser­vices/In­ter­net cafe, cater­ing/restau­rant/bak­ery/roti/con­struc­tion/trades­man and beau­ty/per­son­al care/fit­ness cen­tre.