Willi Mom, director of the ILO Caribbean Office.JAMAICA and three other Caribbean countries have been selected as pilots for a joint UNDP/ILO trade adjustment programme to strengthen the capacity of small and micro businesses to compete internationally when preferential trade arrangements are eliminated in five years.
Suriname, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago are the other three pilot territories.
The programme's objective, according to director of the International Labour Organisation's Caribbean Office, Willi Momm, is to develop a new approach to business that will turn "crude and amateurish" efforts into professional products that will sell internationally.
There is a lot of potential, but also a lot of mediocrity," said Momm, who all but challenged the region to start taking on riskier business prospects. "The commercial and financial sectors should see it as an opportunity to venture outside their traditional ideas of risk," said the ILO director. Preferential trade ends with Europe in December 2007. The idea is to assist private sector firms develop export competences and strategies that will distinguish them in the international market when 2008 rolls around. Jamaica's trade policy consultant, Dr. Rosalea Hamilton, said however that the concentration would only be on those businesses that already possess the ability to compete, but there will be windows to assist other firms that want to become viable.
"We're looking for the firms with the best chance of making it," she said.
The programme is confined to four sectors - craft/fashion, music/entertainment, heritage/community tourism, and information technology - and to be eligible for assistance, the businesses must be locally owned and managed, says Momm. Noting that the programme would be targeted at the more "unconventional ventures", Momm said these sectors presented business opportunities that could become "an incredible source of income and jobs."
The project is just getting off the ground, and its proponents are yet to finalise a budget as well as strategies for its full implementation.
"The next step is to develop project proposals for the countries," said the ILO representative, who insists that the approach would be "result-based" and the projects would have specific targets. He also announced that Dr. Hamilton who is a member of the project team, has agreed to spearhead that aspect of the programme.
The plan involves tapping various donor agencies for funds to finance the programmes that each country devises, and the ILO is hoping that Governments of the pilot nations will commit to the programme by proactively approaching international agencies for additional assistance.
It emerged Wednesday at the project launch at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade that there are a number of ongoing externally funded assistance programmes for SMEs, but information on the pool is dispersed and so their intended beneficiaries are largely ignorant of their existence.
Efforts are being made at the local level to develop an inventory of such programmes, and to have the information centralised.
The European Union, which will launch its own adjustment and development programme for the private sector next year under the Cotonou Agreements, agrees that there should be a "co-ordination and pooling of resources," according to EU First Secretary of Economic Affairs, Adebayo Babajide.
Other donor agencies at the launch Wednesday indicated a willingness to co-operate. The Food and Agriculture Organisation representative suggested that this and other programmes seek to put the countries of the Caribbean in a position to affect the writing of international trade rules, instead of constantly reacting to them.
The UNDP/ILO project will provide technical assistance, institutional strengthening, research and development, and data collection and dissemination services for SMEs on a regional basis.
The orientation is towards exporting, said Momm, with particular attention on market penetration globally with Caribbean peoples throughout the world as a target, tourism, and intra-regional exports, mostly in the area of services.
"The export orientation will act as a stimulus to seriously and systematically invest in activities people are good at," said the ILO director.
The United Nations Development Programme is providing the seed money to drive the project and do the crucial analyses, said Dr. Hamilton. The ILO is involved because of the potential for employment creation.
"All of this export competitiveness underpins employment growth and poverty alleviation, and that's where their fundamental interest is."
