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DE RUEHWN #0555/01 2572033
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P 142033Z SEP 09
FM AMEMBASSY BRIDGETOWN
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7756
INFO RUCNCOM/EC CARICOM COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BRIDGETOWN 000555 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE PLEASE PASS TO OPIC - ALISON GERMAK, USTDA - NATHAN 
YOUNGE AND PATRICIA ARRIAGADA, EXIM - XIOMARA 
CREQUE-BROMBERT 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OIIP ECON EFIN EINV XL
SUBJECT: SSI SPEAKER ELECTRIFIES EASTERN CARIBBEAN SMALL 
BUSINESS COMMUNITY 
 
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Summary 
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¶1.  (U) Strategic Speaker Chuck Mills made a series of 
presentations and met with government officials, local 
chambers of commerce and small business associations during 
his week-long trip to Barbados, Grenada and St. Lucia.  His 
talk on small business development and entrepreneurship was 
well-received by sizeable audiences in each country, 
including many who were actively looking for ways to 
stimulate and support this large but underappreciated 
component of the economy.  Small business owners cited 
limited access to capital, technical training and 
opportunities to expand outside of their small domestic 
consumer base as key impediments to sustainability and 
growth.  Audiences in all countries voiced strong interest in 
learning more about USG programs to support SME development, 
including through the Small Business Administration, OPIC, 
EXIM, and USTDA.  End Summary 
 
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Barbados 
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¶2.  (U) In Barbados, Mills met with embassy staff, senior 
staff of the Barbados Manufacturers Association, and Invest 
Barbados, and participated in both print and television 
interviews.  Mills noted that in Barbados many of the newer 
small business entrepreneurs were women and that the 
leadership of the Barbados Manufacturing Association reflects 
this, as 90 percent of the leadership is female.  The 
Executive Director, Bobbi McKay, confirmed that most new 
enterprises in Barbados are female-owned and female 
entrepreneurs are doing very well in Barbados.  She 
speculated that this is partially because young women are now 
the majority of college students: 68 percent of the students 
at the local University of the West Indies and the community 
college are female, and the majority of students studying 
abroad (who are often the most capable and ambitious 
students) are female. 
 
¶3.  (U) During Mills' meetings, lack of access to capital 
emerged as one of the consistent concerns raised by 
participants.  Most banks in Barbados do not consider newer, 
smaller companies to be good credit risks and most bank 
financing goes to the larger, established companies.  The 
government and the BMA said they were committed to helping 
SMEs succeed and have started an incubator program, but 
lamented that they only have slots available for 20 
companies.  The BMA has about 200 members out of the 300 
estimated manufacturing concerns on the island, which are 
mostly niche food and beverage makers primarily serving the 
local market.  Although the BMA, the Chamber of Commerce and 
Industry, and the government are all encouraging local 
manufacturers to export, they noted that most manufacturers 
are simply not ready. 
 
¶4.  (U) BDIC, the Small Business Association and Invest 
Barbados jointly sponsored the evening event, including a 
reception for the participants.  The evening lecture was 
standing room only, with more than 60 people attending.  The 
Q and A session was lively, with many follow-on questions for 
Mills.  The consensus of the audience, (60 percent female) 
most of whom were small business owners, was that neither the 
government nor the business development corporations were 
particularly effective at meeting the needs of small 
businesses.  Many were unaware that BDIC even has an 
incubator program.  Participants noted that obtaining capital 
is very difficult for a new-to-market firm as the big 
companies receive the bulk of bank financing. 
 
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Grenada 
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¶5.  (U) In Grenada, Mills met with the Grenada Chamber of 
Commerce, did an early morning TV interview and gave his 
presentation to an audience of about 40 people.  The chamber 
was represented by VP Justin King and Director Hazel-Ann 
Hutchinson, both of whom appreciated the message about small 
business development and hoped it would help to improve local 
business conditions, which they claimed were plagued by lack 
of access to capital, general mistrust, and a lack of 
creativity in choosing business lines.  Mills classified 
access to training as the most pressing need, placing it 
ahead of capital as a scarce resource for a small business. 
King and Hutchinson also described the difficulty in running 
 
BRIDGETOWN 00000555  002 OF 002 
 
 
a Chamber as it was difficult to collect fees in order to 
expand the number of services offered.  Mills, who has 
experience running a local Chamber of Commerce in Virginia, 
made several recommendations on how to connect with local 
lawyers and accountants to offer a broader range of services 
and allow those firms to slowly build a client base of small 
but growing businesses. 
 
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Saint Lucia 
----------- 
 
¶6.  (U) In St. Lucia, Mills met with the Small Enterprise 
Development Unit (SEDU) of the Ministry of Commerce, the 
Saint Lucia Industrial and Small Business Association 
(SLISBA), and the MBA Program at Monroe College, and 
delivered a speech sponsored by the latter two institutions 
in conjunction with the American Chamber of Commerce.  Julia 
Mittile, Director of SEDU, stated that the definition of a 
small business in St. Lucia is one with under 1 million 
Eastern Caribbean dollars (approximately US$370,000) in 
annual sales, under 50 employees and under 500,000 EC dollars 
(US$185,000) in assets.  By this measure, over 80 percent of 
companies fit into this category.  Mittile stated that the 
SEDU was attempting to streamline the process of starting a 
business and had reduced the cost to 900 EC dollars (US$ 340) 
and two weeks processing time for registration. 
 
¶7.  (U) The meeting with SLISBA was particularly valuable, as 
it included mostly small business owners who were passionate 
about increasing their access to capital, training, and 
technical assistance.  President Flavia Cherry was interested 
in assistance on starting a business incubator, ways to 
attract a venture capital fund, and developing connections to 
the U.S. Small Business Administration.  The roundtable with 
the MBA students from Monroe College, with twenty students in 
attendance, was a more informal program that led to greater 
interaction between the speaker and the students.  The final 
event garnered attendance of 40 small business owners, 
government officials, and academics. 
 
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Comment 
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¶8.  (U) Mills proved to be an engaging speaker who connected 
well with his audience.  In St. Lucia, the main message from 
the audience was that, while the speaking engagements are a 
great start, they would like to see greater follow up in 
terms of real deliverables such as a business workshop 
describing funding opportunities through Ex-IM Bank, USTDA 
and OPIC.  Many of the participants did not attend the 
earlier Embassy-sponsored workshops in either Barbados or St. 
Lucia, and to reach a broader audience, post is planning to 
conduct additional workshops in the region, following those 
conducted in Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Kitts in 2008. 
There is a strong desire within the region to learn more 
about how incubators function in the U.S., with the hope of 
transferring that knowledge to establish one in the OECS. 
End comment. 
HARDT