Charles Kong Soo

Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings said Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing sup­port for small busi­ness­es. He said so be­fore he em­barked on a tour with Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox of 311 booths at a Small Busi­ness Christ­mas Ex­po host­ed by Trin­Mag at North Park, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, yes­ter­day.

“In this year’s bud­get, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter an­nounced a fa­cil­i­ty of $50 mil­lion to as­sist small busi­ness­es to put their records in or­der and strength­en their ca­pac­i­ty to have prop­er records to keep in line with their statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions. They will then be in a po­si­tion to ac­cess all the ser­vices that Gov­ern­ment will of­fer to small busi­ness­es,” Cum­mings said.

The min­is­ter said the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Ned­co), which is at the fore­front of pro­mot­ing small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur­ship and Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy on small busi­ness­es, will be tak­ing its ser­vices in­to the com­mu­ni­ty next year.

He ac­knowl­edged that the pan­dem­ic had been dif­fi­cult for small busi­ness­es and re­it­er­at­ed that Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing them as they strive to get back on track and ex­pand their op­er­a­tions.

Cox said one of her min­istry’s man­dates is to help em­pow­er and trans­form lives and she saw the event as an em­pow­er­ment ex­er­cise where peo­ple were able to step up and im­prove them­selves.

She added that many peo­ple are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing hard­ships be­cause of COVID-19 and thanked Trin­Mag for or­gan­is­ing the Christ­mas ex­po as en­tre­pre­neurs were able to show­case their tal­ent and items and make some mon­ey.

Cox said the So­cial De­vel­op­ment min­istry de­cid­ed to be part of the event be­cause it in­volved a seed grant that was of­fered to the vul­ner­a­ble. She ex­plained that some peo­ple would be able to ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ty, be­come small en­tre­pre­neurs and even­tu­al­ly grow.

Yes­ter­day’s event was at­tend­ed by Ned­co CEO Calvin Mau­rice, NCC CEO Col­in Lu­cas, Trin­Mag Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Miguel Bap­tiste, Pre­ci­sion Signs & Tro­phies Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Ker­win Joseph and Ned­co di­rec­tors and staff.