“Barbados, on the evidence before us, has been our most successful economy. It has achieved a level of development and per capita income that compares with Taiwan and Singapore, but seems to be severely hit, like the rest of us in the region, by the extreme severity of the global recession.” Sir Dwight Venner.

 These words reverberated the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, as keynote speaker, Sir Dwight Venner addressed the VI Annual Leo Leacock Memorial Lecture during Small Business Week 2014. Speaking on the theme Small Business as an Elixir For Economic Recovery, the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank proffered that Barbados’ "catch-up game" was proving to be a bigger feat than expected since the country was lagging to create sustainable grow following the 2008 global crisis. Though not impossible to rebound, Barbados needed more than the monopolising of a few persons; the country required a new strategy that would harness the strengths and creativity to create the numbers, which would quicken the wheels of progress currently lacking.

Much in conjunction with what the Small Business Association has been promoting over the years, Sir Venner declared that “critical mass is what cuts it. We must begin to mobilise the entrepreneurs of the region from the very early stages, and the existing business organisations such as the SBA must be in the vanguard” the leading Caribbean economist stressed.  

 Sir Venner further listed the beneficial factors to grouping resources among small enterprises. “Collective action and networking add considerable value to enterprises. The value proposition comes from the ability to source things in bulk, to jointly manufacture products, to engage in scientific research. The value proposition of collective action is somewhat like the supply of electricity. If it is cut off then you really appreciate the service,” he posited.

Sir Dwight noted Barbados’ conglomerates Goddard Enterprises and Sagicor Financial Services as companies that have proven to be pathfinders to economic recovery.  However, as Barbados and the region looked to the bigger companies to sustain and stabilise growth, he  posited that new initiatives would come from the companies that can innovate and have the incentives and support to do so. “So that is why I would put my money on the smaller firms", he assured. These small and medium enterprises too have to make their own adjustments to service what small economies have been plagued with since Independence. "We must enter into a phase of sober reflection on our current state of how we got here, and to extract the positive from what has to be seen as a socio-economic reality check,” Sir Dwight concluded.