US$2m. for islands
Publication: Sunday Sun
Date: Sun, May 11, 1997
Page: 5A
Byline: Terry Ally
THE WINDWARDS Islands, whose US$200 million banana industry looks bleak, has received a US$2 million grant from the United States for micro business development.
The grant, announced by First Lady Hillary Clinton, is to assist small people to find new means of livelihood, as traditional markets.
Clinton told a Micro Business Forum at Frank Collymore Hall yesterday that the US felt it had a need to assist Caribbean states.
"The US will commit $2 million to help those Eastern Caribbean countries that are having the hardest time weathering the economic transformation sweeping the globe, particularly the Windward Islands, Dominica, St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Grenada," she told the event organised by the Caribbean Development Bank and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The money will support existing and proven Caribbean initiatives to expand and diversify trade, strengthen social services, promote education and foster micro-enterprises.
Under the plan, USAID will provide US$500 000 for micro enterprise assistance which will be channeled through each country's National Development Foundation (NDF) which offer small unsecured loans for workable ideas.
The tools were very effective, she said, with a default rate of less than 10 per cent in the Caribbean.
In a forceable argument, she said that commercial and private banks ought to take similar risks.
"Many private banks say it is so expensive to service these small loans," she said.
"Yes, it is more expensive and yes, many of the micro entrepreneurs need assistance in their basic economic information, about how to handle their money and do their business, but I know many commercial banks that lend millions of dollars to people who default, who don't have the intelligence or business sense to make a return, and I wish more banks would take a risk of people they would see every day."
She lauded the "cutting edge efforts" of the Bank of Nova Scotia in, Guyana and the Workers Bank of Jamaica which were providing micro-credit loans and urged more commercial and private banks to follow suit.
The forum brought together 20 entrepreneurs who benefited from micro-credit institutions in Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica and Haiti.
Among the nearly 400 invited guests were also the directors of NDFs from the Windward Islands and Barbados, the Peace Corps, the Workers' Bank of Jamaica, the Institute of Private Enterprise Development of Guyana, the chief, representatives of the Carib Indian Territory of Dominica.