One year into the multi-year partnership between the MSME Alliance and the Caribbean Enterprise Network (CEN-UK), a UK-based diaspora group, some 13 small businesses have benefited from investments made by local and returning residents.
Denis St Bernard. Photo courtesy http://jamaica-gleaner.com
Working in conjunction with Priority Group International, a Jamaican-based business conglomerate, CEN-UK has been assisting in the development of a small-business complex in Bog Walk, St. Catherine, with plans to provide a wide range of business development services, including mentorship, partnerships, funding and marketing between UK-based entities and the MSME Alliance?.?
According to CEN’s Director of Operations, Mr. Denis St. Bernard, an international business consultant, effective outcomes already have begun to take place concerning diaspora investments in Jamaica since the MOU was signed between the MSME Alliance and CENU-UK in June 2015.
“We can now point to the Bog Walk project where, working with the MSME Alliance, we have persons returning from the diaspora who have set up several small businesses in the Plaza and doing fairly well by providing a number of goods and services to the fast growing surrounding communities,” Mr. St. Bernard said… “This is effective diaspora investment, occurring in an organic way, as the entrepreneurs are bringing their skills, expertise and most of all, their capital to the process,” he added.
CEN recently established an office in Bog Walk, working in conjunction with the Priority Group and the MSME Alliance, thanks to MSME Alliance president, Donovan Wignal and the MSME Alliance Secretariat.
And in keeping with its long-term commitment to small-business development in Jamaica, Mr. St. Bernard noted that CEN-UK are in discussions with the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) in an effort to take its initiative to the next level by helping local SMEs as well as diaspora-based entities and entrepreneurs to set their sights and focus on listing on the Junior Market, given that the JSE has the tools, structures and platform to assist this process.
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