Gail Alexan­der

The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ned­co) ex­haust­ed the $30 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for its En­tre­pre­neur­ial Re­lief Grants (ERG) pro­gramme af­ter re­ceiv­ing 5,000 ap­pli­ca­tions, and $20 mil­lion more will be sup­plied and a sur­vey is be­ing done to see how ap­pli­cants pro­gressed af­ter the grant.

Ned­co chair­man Clar­ry Benn in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day when his man­age­ment ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee (PAEC), with of­fi­cials of the Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­istry to which Ned­co was shift­ed in 2020. The fo­cus was on Ned­co’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2017.

Ques­tions from PAEC mem­bers Kei­th Scot­land and Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing in­volved Ned­co’s con­tri­bu­tion to min­istry pro­grammes to as­sist youths away from crime and oth­er chal­lenges in com­mu­ni­ties.

Among work, Benn said Ned­co was al­lo­cat­ed $30 mil­lion to ex­e­cute the ERG and that was “to­tal­ly ex­haust­ed.”

There were 5,457 ap­pli­cants for the pro­gramme, with 3,373 suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants. Some $29.5 mil­lion was giv­en out.

The ERG pro­gramme, ac­cord­ing to Ned­co’s web­site, tar­get­ed el­i­gi­ble mi­cro and small en­ter­prise op­er­a­tors who were neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the pan­dem­ic.

It al­lowed el­i­gi­ble ap­pli­cants— T&T na­tion­als/le­gal res­i­dents—to re­boot busi­ness­es. Own­ers could ac­cess up to $20,000 to off­set op­er­a­tions, up­grade equip­ment and pur­chase in­ven­to­ry and fi­nance re­pairs.

Benn said there was a large group el­i­gi­ble for the grant but with ex­haust­ed re­sources, Ned­co en­tered talks with Fi­nance and the lat­ter min­istry agreed to al­lo­cate an ad­di­tion­al $20 mil­lion to­wards the end of 2022.

Benn said that means the pro­gramme would then ben­e­fit all of the 5,000-odd ap­pli­cants.

He said the pro­gramme gave Ned­co an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­face with new SME clients. He said a sur­vey is cur­rent­ly be­ing done on re­cip­i­ents to see how they are do­ing in the post-al­lo­ca­tion phase and how they ben­e­fit­ted from the grant and a re­port will be done on that. PAEC chair­man Wade Mark asked for a copy of the re­port.

On shift­ing busi­ness­es from the in­for­mal to the for­mal sec­tor, Ned­co CEO Calvin Mau­rice said the Busi­ness Ac­cel­er­a­tor loan - Ned­co’s lead in as­sist­ing youths in chal­lenged ar­eas - at­tract­ed 4,000 ap­pli­ca­tions, 700 of which weren’t reg­is­tered busi­ness­es.

Ned­co’s bid to make youths more risk-averse al­so in­cludes an up­com­ing ef­fort to seek con­nec­tions with ap­pro­pri­ate min­istries to sup­port ease of do­ing busi­ness for youths, get­ting ad­vice and reg­is­ter­ing busi­ness­es, he added.

PAEC mem­ber Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine asked Ned­co to do a state­ment on de­tails of $66 mil­lion writ­ten off in bad loans over 2016-17, when Ned­co lost 3,379 ac­counts and on cur­rent non-per­form­ing loans.

Mark said PAEC was to­tal­ly dis­sat­is­fied with the “snail’s pace of au­dit­ing” of Ned­co’s ac­counts and urged speedy com­ple­tion.

Benn couldn’t give a date as to when an au­dit of 2018-2020 ac­counts would be com­plet­ed, since he said that was up to au­di­tors.

A new firm—Grant Thor­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions Ltd—is do­ing au­dits for the first time. Benn said ac­counts would have been com­plet­ed but pan­dem­ic ef­fects – in­clud­ing un­avail­abil­i­ty of doc­u­ments and per­son­nel—couldn’t be ig­nored. Mau­rice said Ned­co hopes to bring its ac­counts to cur­rent sta­tus in Jan­u­ary 2023.

PAEC mem­ber Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh said she was pleased that from 2017 to date, Ned­co had em­barked on rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­struc­tur­ing. Benn had not­ed con­cerns on pre­vi­ous PAEC re­ports and that Ned­co had fo­cused on be­com­ing sus­tain­able and lean.

There was a com­plete over­haul in 2018, with re­struc­tur­ing which he said led to the emer­gence of the new Ned­co with new di­vi­sions to sharp­en fo­cus and re­duce staff, costs and out­lets.

Benn said it hasn’t af­fect­ed Ned­co, since many ap­ply on­line and busi­ness is en­hanced.

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