THE Caricom Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) in collaboration with the Inter-American Develoment Bank Multilateral Investment Fund (IDB-MIF), on Wednesday launched a million-dollar project geared towards increasing the competitiveness of small and micro enterprises (SMEs) throughout the region.

The project, called ‘Promoting Small and Medium sized Enterprise Competitiveness in the Caribbean through Technical Standards’, will be facilitated locally by Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) and is expected to run for four years. It will be funded to the tune of over J$1.7 million, 70 per cent of which will be provided by the IDB with the other 30 per cent coming from the four participating territories in the region – Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago.

Its objective, according to national coordinator at BSJ Paulette Terrelonge, is geared at boosting the competitiveness of small businesses, thereby increasing their export options.

“At the end of the 48 months, we hope to achieve a level of competence among the SMEs which will allow them to export their products regionally and internationally. It is to enhance competitiveness and increase compatibility,” she said.

A release from the BSJ put the goals in more specific terms. It said the CROSQ/IDB-MIF project will demonstrate the strategic importance of standards (specifications necessary for achieving reasonable safety, quality and efficiency of products, processes and procedures) in the facilitation of trade, demonstrate that the application of standards will ensure sustainability and exportability of products, facilitate greater stakeholder involvement and deepen the existing regional model for standards development.

President of the Small Business Association of Jamaica Oswald Smith is hopeful that the project will enhance the viability of small businesses in the country.

“It’s always good to highlight the importance of standards because that’s the only thing that will help us compete in a globalised economy,” he told the Observer.

“There are many challenges (facing the sector) especially with those businesses that offer manufactured goods such as furniture. The foreign goods are mass produced and they use material such as baggasse and compressed wood while the local manufacturers use real wood which is more durable, so that makes their (local manufacturers’) products more expensive,” he reported.

“We’re in a globalised economy which makes it even more challenging. That is why we try and adapt and create niche markets,” he said.

Also expressing pleasure at the launch of the standards project was guest speaker at the launch, president of the Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union League, Christopher Samuda. He noted that standards ought to be a way of life for SMEs.

“In life’s arena of competition characterised by the globalisation of markets and monopolies. it is imperative that small and medium-sized enterprises demonstrate an adherence to technical standards as a way of life,” he told guests gathered at an awareness seminar at the Knutsford Court Hotel in St Andrew.

Calling the programme “relevant and timely”, the credit union boss said the purposes of the project are suited to the survival of the SME sector.

“In an era when philosophies and attitudes of ‘cutting corners’ appeal to the creative sensibilities and fuel the inventive imagination of business. observance of technical standards is shunted and viewed as pedantic, if not academic, and certainly excessive. Obviously we cannot countenance this and CROSQ and the Bureau of Standards will play a critical role in reorientating the psyche of small and medium business interests and instilling and ingraining in the marrow of their lifestyle and operations, an ethos of standards and competencies.”