Is Jamaica really open for business?

If you ever tried to start a business in Jamaica the right way, and by that I mean setting up your business to comply with the various local statutory laws, you would quickly find out how complex and tedious the entire process is. You may even come to the conclusion that registering your business is just a waste of valuable time. Well, that’s the conclusion I came to, having gone through the same process myself.

It does appear that the system of setting up your business is unnecessarily complicated when you consider the number of registration documents that one would need to submit to all the relevant institutions. Now, this being Jamaica, I guess it would be too optimistic to think that this will change anytime soon. Yes, you can ignore my pessimism, but I have little hope that our Politian’s have the desire to create an efficient system which allows people to get things done quickly.

You may be surprised that the bureaucracy does not stop with the government agencies, but the commercial banks seem to be the most problematic. To open a savings account for your business, you would think that submitting your business registration certificate, National ID, and Tax Registration Number (TRN) would be sufficient. Well, I guess that would be the scenario in an ideal world, but Jamaica seems not to be the ideal place to do business.

Based on my personal experience, I found that each bank had very specific requirements to open a bank account; like Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) wanted to visit my place of business, the National Commercial Bank wanted me to provide a Tax Compliance Certificate (TCC) and audited financial statements, and First Caribbean (FCIB) required me to have a cash flow projection, Business TRN and a credit report.

Now, for the ordinary person who “jus waan do a ting”, I find that these requirements are unfair as well as discriminatory to a number of Jamaicans. Let me make it clear, when I say discriminatory, I mean there is a bias towards persons who have access to money, and a certain level of education. For the average person like myself, these requirements are difficult to understand, and very tedious to comply with, and the banks seem not apply any type of common sense when creating these policies.

SME (Small and Medium Size Enterprises) is the new buzz word in the banking sector, but how can they claim to provide services that are tailored for small businesses, when they have not put the necessary systems in place to accommodate that sector.

I am here to tell the banks that we are entrepreneurs, not criminals, so if the Jamaican economy expects the micro business sector to provide the robust growth that this country needs, as well as limiting the size of the informal economy, we need to take a serious look at the framework in which our small businesses have to operate.