The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Ned­co) has paid out close to $28 mil­lion to help mi­cro and small busi­ness­es deal with the on­go­ing eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This was the sword from Ned­co CEO Calvin Mau­rice yes­ter­day as he ap­peared be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) to de­ter­mine the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on mi­cro-busi­ness­es.

Mau­rice said Ned­co re­ceived some 5,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for grant re­lief and paid out on 3,500 of them, with the grants up to $20,000.

The ques­tion arose as the JSC asked ques­tions about mi­cro and small busi­ness­es that are un­reg­is­tered and there­fore un­able to ac­cess the Gov­ern­ment grants.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les asked about the process of reg­is­ter­ing busi­ness­es in or­der to ac­cess Gov­ern­ment grants. Mau­rice con­firmed that Ned­co had be­gun the process of as­sist­ing with mi­cro-busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion but said the prop­er reg­is­tra­tion of busi­ness­es and their abil­i­ty to pro­vide proof of op­er­a­tion ex­pen­di­ture were just some of the is­sues en­coun­tered.

“Ned­co has start­ed the process through the dis­burse­ment of grants, where part of the re­quire­ment would have been the reg­is­tra­tion of the busi­ness­es. At the end of the day, we would have those per­sons who ap­plied for grants be­ing reg­is­tered and be­ing part of the for­mal sys­tem,” he said.

“Oth­er than that, Ned­co will be work­ing to­geth­er with all stake­hold­ers to gauge these small, mi­cro-busi­ness­es who are not part of the sys­tem in terms of reach­ing out to the com­mu­ni­ties and do­ing var­i­ous forms of da­ta col­lec­tion.”

Mau­rice said the com­pa­ny has plans to en­gage the com­mu­ni­ties in 2022, rel­a­tive to com­mu­ni­ty and vil­lage life. He said it was a ma­jor area that Ned­co is in­volved in. He said Ned­co was al­so look­ing to give out small­er loans to break in­to the small­er sec­tor.

Mau­rice said the process is now to have small­er busi­ness­es reg­is­tered but not­ed that some peo­ple would not have col­lat­er­al and that Ned­co al­so had to pro­tect its own risk.

JSC chair, Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, al­so raised ques­tions about tax as­sis­tance to small busi­ness­es.

“That was a fa­cil­i­ty that was wide­ly used, why was it dis­con­tin­ued?” she asked.

How­ev­er, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Fi­nance Yvonne Neemacha­ran, who was al­so at the ses­sion, said she need­ed in­put from the Board of In­land Rev­enue to bet­ter an­swer that ques­tion.

“We have in­tro­duced the on­line tax sys­tem and it is the hope that it would elim­i­nate some dif­fi­cul­ty that tax­pay­ers would have had,” Neemacha­ran said.