The Guyana Development Bank (GDB) should have systems in place to support businesses that fail or struggle to perform optimally, while ensuring borrowers remain accountable for managing their finances responsibly, said Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of one of the largest private sector organisations in Guyana, Komal Singh. Singh founded GAICO, which has grown from a small local civil works contractor into a major provider supporting Guyana’s infrastructure, marine construction, waste management and oil and gas sectors.

During The Guyana Dialogue programme on Thursday, he noted that while the GDB is expected to address access to capital for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), business owners must also develop sound financial management practices.

“Many businesses fail because of poor financial management. Especially, if you get a job and you get an advanced payment. If you don’t understand that that advanced payment does not belongs to you, but it belongs to the project and you start, you know, spending it here and there without proper management, you’re definitely going to run into problems,” Singh, a former chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC) highlighted. Nonetheless, he expressed confidence that the bank will have systems in place to support borrowers and help them achieve their business objectives. But the GAICO CEO emphasised the importance of timely interventions. “I’m very, very confident that the Government will have a very robust system in place, first of all, to evaluate those proposals, to have proper follow-up and monitoring systems in place and also to have a feedback session if the business fail for some reason, or they’re not performing as per plan, there must be a mechanism in place that you can review those proposals…to understand where is it you went wrong…,” he said, noting that these sessions must be conducted regularly. With the necessary legislative framework now in place to govern the establishment of the GDB, the Government has begun setting up regional offices and recruiting the technical personnel required to support the operations of the State-backed financial institution.