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| Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise Development in the Caribbean: Towards A New Frontier
INTRODUCTION Approach The approach consisted of the following key actions: 1. Development of two questionnaires – one for interviews with the MSME stakeholders in the CDB member countries and the other for gathering statistical data from specialty financial institutions serving MSMEs. These instruments, attached as Appendices 2a and 2b, were: a. pilot tested and refined into a standardized set of questions for use as the uniform Interview Guide for in-country visits; b. used to gather specific product information and performance statistics from selected financial institutions serving MSMEs in six countries; and c. contributed to improved data gathering and report-writing efficiency; 2. Development of a list of key institutions and persons to interview in each of the eight BMCs. Interviewed were Ministers and Permanent Secretaries responsible for Trade, Industry and Commerce as well as senior personnel in other Ministries and in the Development Banks, Departments of Statistics and Company Registries in all eight countries.
Executives in business support organisations, financial institutions, as well as national, regional and international development agencies, were also interviewed. The list of persons interviewed from 96 organisations is presented at Appendix 3.
Definition and Data Challenges 1. MSME sector definition and size: One of the most elusive challenges in assessing MSME development is the categorising of this business group into uniformly acknowledged “size” categories.
In addition to the fact that some countries are at different stages of development and therefore maintain independent classifications of the sector, much of the research that has preceded this study – mostly by the World Bank, the International Development Bank (IDB) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) – has used different criteria to those informally adopted by some BMCs in their local research or classification metrics.
2. Multi-dimensional data limitations: Overall, enterprise data is not classified in national statistics in terms of business size. Information is usually available on a sector basis e.g. manufacturing or services.
But, apart from inferences that can be made from national business registration office data, there is limited access to actual MSME data, besides the data generated via special surveys or selective one-off studies.
Also, there is limited up-to-date information on the relative scale of support provided via technical assistance programmes although snapshots can be obtained on a periodic basis. Similarly, export data is not stratified according to business size, and the contribution of SMEs to economic development is not well documented across the Bank’s borrowing member countries (BMCs).