International Donors and Funding Agencies Need to Rethink how they Disburse the Management of Funds

For the past two years as the President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce (GCCI), I have been trying to convince international donors of the utility of channelling funds through the local private sector organizations. Case in point: The European Union EPA funds. After five years the EPA implementation has proceeded at a slow pace with little or no benefit to our domestic private sector.

Part of the failure can be attributed to the fact that donors continue to disburse funds through state agencies or multilateral agencies such as Ministries, the Caribbean Development Bank, CARICOM, Caribbean Export etc. The past 5 years of implementing the EPA has shown that this arrangement is not working. Numerous reasons can be advanced for the failure, but the most salient are the fact that the targeted small and medium sized businesses feel intimidated to approach these institutions and some of these agencies are located outside of Guyana and with the exception of calls for proposals through online medium and periodic information sessions, the Guyana private sector knows very little of what is available to them.

Why not set up a help desk for small and medium sized enterprises at the Chamber's Secretariat to build the trade and export capacity of these businesses? Add in rigorous transparency and accountability guidelines and let the Chamber recruit, monitor and manage the programmes.