by Jerry DaC Blenman
Among the heartbreaking happenings I have witnessed over many years within the Caribbean business community, has been the collapse of business entities and the plummeting of owners and staff alike into despair and bewilderment. More heart-wrenching has been the occasion of those failures at the micro/small business level, where families, dependent on the earnings of the business to exist in decency and enjoy basic amenities, have been exposed to very disconcerting and vulnerable circumstances.
Distressingly, there is a wide and accepted notion that failure is a natural element of business. Actually, the commentary and numbness exhibited by those looking on from the outside at the deep-rooted financial and emotional brokenness experienced by micro and small business owners when their businesses fail, has been quite interesting.
Within the Caribbean and other small island developing states, we can ill-afford the loss of important capital, be it at the micro or macro level, but especially at the micro/small level where the scourge of poverty finds its fastest manifestation when such failures occur.
Understanding the issues that contribute to the failure rate of varying sized organizations and taking prescriptive actions to reduce and where possible eliminate failure, must be a norm of our developmental future and productive purpose. Two of several questions before us, which shouldn't be sidestepped are:
1. How much has the failure of varying sized organizations been costing national economies and the region?
2. If such failures had not occurred, to what extent could further growth been realized in national economies and the region?
For those who have not yet taken note, local and regional trade especially among small business owners is about business, survival and the pursuit of a dignified future. To small business owners, a word of advise, slow down and give some attention to establishing a quality infrastructure for your business. Why? It is the basis of your survival and foundation of a dignified future for you and your family.