It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Barbados Youth Business Trust (BYBT) to provide young entrepreneurs with financial assistance as the number of those seeking start-up capital continues to rise.
BYBT executive director Marcia Brandon told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that since the start of 2012, approximately 175 young people visited the organization seeking help to start a small business. She said while they were not able to assist all of them financially, they would offer technical, training and other forms of support.
For the first two months of 2010 over 167 young entrepreneurs received assistance from the organization and 138 for the first two months of 2009.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up because of the fact that there are so many young people coming to us now,” she explained.
“And it is not only young people – there are people over 35 [years old] coming to us asking ‘please, please help us because there is no one else’. We can help them with different things but we cannot lend them the funding because we are already [constrained] in terms of the funding,” said Brandon.
She pointed out that of those opening businesses each year, approximately 25 per cent would go out of business after five years.
“I don’t have the exact figures, but one thing I can tell you is that 75 per cent of the young people we have helped over the years are still in business after five years. So if we used that, we can say about 25 per cent of them closed their businesses.
“That, for us, is one of our key performance indicators of how well we are assisting the young people,” she said.
Brandon’s comments came after the Chinese embassy presented the BYBT with a home entertainment system at the embassy’s Rockley, Christ Church location last Friday.
Noting that the Chinese embassy had a strong relationship with the BYBT and the business community in Barbados, counsellor Wang Lei said they would do what they could “to continue to support young entrepreneurs and help provide opportunities for them”.
Accepting the donation, Brandon said it would be used to assist with training, capturing some of the success stories, and “to the benefit of the organization as a whole”.
Since the BYBT opened in 1996, over 25 500 young entrepreneurs have received start-up capital and other assistance.
The BYBT offers financial and technical assistance, training and mentoring among other support to people between the age of 18 and 35 who have a feasible business ideas.
