“I have no doubt whatsoever about the great future that (Trinidad and Tobago) is going to have. I see in my vision a united Caribbean region and I see (Trinidad and Tobago) as the helm at the top leading the Caribbean region. It is a dream I have held since as a boy and it is a dream coming true.” – The late A.N.R. Robinson, former President and Prime Minister, Trinidad and Tobago (Trinidad and Tobago Newsday)
Last week it was reported in the press that the President of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Lalu Vaswani, said that the true state of the Barbados economy is not a rosy picture. He lamented Government’s lack of forthrightness on the economy and policies that could lead to lack of confidence as well as anxiety over the future of the exchange rate of the Barbados dollar. As a result he appealed to the Government, the trade union movement and other stakeholders to come together now to rescue the island.
Here are 12 instruments which may constitute a solution to the problem either individually or in combination: (1) corporate social responsibility grants; (2) sponsorship in return for publicity (3) crowd funding; (4) asset-based lending; (5) factoring of receivables; (6) retail bond markets; (7) public equity markets (local or foreign); (8) angel investors; (9) traditional venture capitalists; (10) benevolent seed/equity capitalist entities which allow the enterprise to buy-back the investors shares and regain ownership as close to 100% as is desired; (11) demand loans from friends and family who believe in the entrepreneurs and/or the enterprise; and (12) profits from “cash cow” subsidiaries of the primary enterprise activity. There may be other instruments.
I grew up in the management consulting profession with the business planning culture that “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” (Winston Churchill) and “If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there” (Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland). I have had my experiences preparing many business plans in the Caribbean over the years – thick documents which comprised a marketing plan, an operational plan and a financial investment plan (financial forecasts and all). After all that trouble, I would tell my clients that the only thing that is predictable about the business plan is that the forecast would not be right because it was based on a number of assumptions over which we have no control. This then led to the question “why prepare these massive business plans in the first place?” The answer, of course, is that it was part of the culture. It was what was taught in the formal business courses.