THIRTY family businesses will benefit from technical consultancy being provided by an Inter-American Development Bank funded, Private Sector of Jamaica project aimed at “improving the competitiveness of Jamaican family businesses through Corporate Governance”, while 10 of those firms will be chosen for more in-depth consulting support by the PSOJ.

Following a two-day workshop held at Club Riu Ocho Rios between July 29 and August 1, the PSOJ said that Dr Robert Blunden, associate professor of strategic management at Dalhousie University and two local consultants — L Garth Kiddoe and Jacqueline Peat-Smith — will “make in-firm visits with each family business over the next eight weeks to identify their specific technical assistance needs”.

“From this group, 10 firms will be chosen for more in-depth consulting support by the PSOJ”, said a release issued by the PSOJ last week.

The residential workshop was the second component of the IDB-funded “Fambiz” project, which is aimed at increasing the competitiveness and sustainability of Jamaica’s small and medium-sized family-owned businesses by expanding their market opportunities and achieving higher survival rates over several generations.

“The project acknowledges that family enterprises represent a complex system of three overlapping subsystems: ownership, the business and the family,” said the PSOJ release. “Through the training and technical assistance that will be provided to participating family firms, the project will address some common problems faced by family businesses, including, most importantly, succession and strategic planning, how to structure family meetings or create “family councils” and how to implement governance structures that are most appropriate for the family firm at its particular stage of development.”

The project is funded by a grant from the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank and is locally sponsored by Scotiabank, the Development Bank of Jamaica and Pan Jam Investment Trust Limited.

PSOJ president Joseph M Matalon said that “on an organisational and national level, I am particularly enthusiastic about this programme because of the view I hold that family-held small and medium enterprises have the potential to contribute very significantly to improving the growth potential and trajectory of the Jamaican economy”.

He noted that “over the past 15 years, Jamaica has enjoyed a disproportionately large share of global foreign direct investment flows, and yet during that same period we have averaged only less than one per cent growth in GDP and certainly significantly less than standard econometric models would suggest to have been possible given these levels of FDI.

“I believe there is very good evidence that this conundrum — high levels of FDI coexisting with low growth — has a lot to do with the fact that as a country we have failed to mobilise our SME sector through a wide range of policy initiatives that would have served to encourage the sector,” he added. These initiatives, he said, include “better access to credit, the creation of an enabling business environment and a competitive tax regime that encourages entrepreneurship.”

The PSOJ also plans to create a special committee to address family business issues and plan other events that will build on the learning achieved at the weekend workshop, in the months and years to come.