PM: Govt aims at 5,000 small businesses a year

Manning says:
Market forces do not operate in the interest of the poor, disadvantaged and dispossessed.
Government’s target is to establish 5,000 new small or micro enterprises a year.
By Shaliza Hassanali

PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning yesterday called on the National Entrepreneurship Development Company Ltd (Nedco) to get its act together.
Manning also advised them to devise some mechanisms to reduce delinquency among its clients.
The PM lambasted Nedco for failing to get its act together and called on the organisation to shape up as he delivered the feature address at the commissioning of Nedco Centre at New Street, Port-of-Spain.

Addressing Nedco’s CEO Kelvin Sergeant, chairman Elizabeth Raphael, Port-of-Spain mayor Murchison Brown and guests, Manning said while Nedco had been meeting its mandate and the Government had been doing its part, he recognised the organisation was faced with challenges.
Among the challenges, Manning said, was delinquency on the part of its clients.

“We must therefore device mechanisms to reduce delinquency and to realise a commensurate level of responsibility on the part of the clients of Nedco,” he said.

“It is easier achieved when we ensure that the clients have been transformed into knowledge-oriented, technological and technically competent producers,” Manning added.

Although Manning knocked the organisation, he also heaped praises on its operators, saying the development over the last five years represents the burgeoning of the small and micro enterprise sector in T&T.

Manning said Nedco was one of Government’s way of investing in human capital.
He said there were those who believed that one could leave every thing up to the market and all else would fall into place.

“But market forces do not operate in the interest of the poor, disadvantaged and the dispossessed,” the PM added.

Manning stressed that the promotion of small business development was part of the Government’s strategy to ensure that no one was left behind.

“It’s about empowering the grassroots, increasing the wealth, reduction of poverty and sustainable development which would stand the test of time,” he said.

Manning said the promotion of small business development was an integral part of the Government’s development policy initiatives for T&T.

“From the point of view of the Government, the target is to be able to establish, during the medium term, some 5,000 new small or micro enterprises per year in the non-traditional business sector,” Manning disclosed.

This is the another way the fockin PNM has chosen to sponsor dey fockin friend, family and supporters.

Ah mean, give ah nigga some money and tell em open business. Well he investing in getting an outfit in Ethiopian flag colours and ah jockeys shorts wid matching colours to go and sell fockin nuts by the side ah the mudder cont road. That is fockin business for niggas. Ah sno cone cart or ah hot dog stand in tong that does only operate from midnight to 5 the next morning to feed they bandit family.

Some ole niggas might take the other way, selling mauby bark, cinnamon sticks and some fockin grass dat look like sea moss pose of f on a fockin bench in tong whole mudder cont day under some Syrian or Indian shop. Then we have the sophisticated entrepreneur who will sit whole fockin day again to sell some fockin dinner mint and various sweety from KC ( who by the way might geh dem it on credit) toloom and tambran balls.

These are the heavy investments by niggas with funds from NEDCO. Then dey go run those assorted empires buss and cyah repay the mudder cont loans that dey take from NEDCO.

Why yuh think the fockin PNM remove the operations of this free money enterprise to niggas from the Freedom of Information Act? Makes sense.