MANDEVILLE, Manchester — BUSINESS leaders and interests in this south-central parish are optimistic that the huge volumes of transactions and currency here will continue to grow with targeted transformation of commerce.

Lititia Myers-Gray, president and chief executive officer of Beryllium Limited (formerly Guardsman Armoured), and president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Simone Spence-Johnson believe that the use of targeted strategies and a business incubator will yield growth for the parish.

Speaking at the Manchester Chamber of Commerce’s Lunch in the Tropics function on Wednesday at Tropics View Hotel in Hatfield, Manchester, Myers-Gray said the parish is among the areas of high transaction status and currency value.

“When I pulled out Kingston and St Andrew from our data and I looked at the parishes stacked together in terms of the volumes of transactions and volumes of currency, Manchester is number four. They are number four after the heavy tourism parishes — St James, St Ann, Westmoreland — this is significant information,” she said.

Beryllium provides major business process outsourcing services to organisations including financial and commercial institutions like banks among other businesses.

Myers-Gray said Manchester is poised for significant growth.

“I’m not sure how many people understand where Manchester lies in terms of the amount of business transactions that you do here on a daily basis. It is a big deal and there is more to this data,” she said.

“Manchester is number four and poised for significant growth. You guys are sitting on a goldmine and we need to look into this data and identify what it is saying about our businesses, what it is saying about our entrepreneurs and how we can help them literally build on that for further growth,” she added.

She said Beryllium offers services to “all financial institutions in Manchester”.

“We provide services here specifically in Manchester to over 700 businesses and 31 ATMs (automated teller machines),” she said.

She added that targeted transformation is necessary to achieve growth.

“No organisation can stand still and expect to be successful over a period of time….We have to be prepared to make targeted transformation possible for all of us. We have to be deliberate in how we decide to transform,” she said.

Spence-Johnson said one of the strategic objectives this year for the Manchester Chamber of Commerce is to have more inclusion of businesses across the parish.

“… We have embarked upon taking our meetings around the parish of Manchester. We have a lot of things being concentrated in Mandeville. [It] is the epicentre, yes, but we are the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, so we made that one of our main goals to take [the objective] around the parish,” she explained.

Christiana, Porus, Mile Gully and Cross Keys are the towns which are to benefit from the attention of the business group.

“We are trying to go around the parish and to make [businesses] feel inclusive, get the businesses on board,” said Spence-Johnson.

She added that the group will be partnering with the Mandeville-based Northern Caribbean University (NCU) for a business incubator.

“NCU is the largest university in Manchester, and we believe that they are the hub of the creatives and a lot of things are coming out of the beacon on the hill. We believe that this will support the up-and-coming entrepreneurs,” she said.