Doville Inniss 01

Minister with responsibility for Small Business Development, Donville Inniss. (FP)

In order to create a higher number of entrepreneurs throughout the region, its citizens need to become risk takers.

Minister with responsibility for Small Business Development, Donville Inniss, made this comment this morning at the opening ceremony of a two-day seminar entitled: Entrepreneurship – Towards the Creation of an Entrepreneurial-Driven Economy – Demystifying the Journey, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

Mr. Inniss identified the region’s education system as being designed to ensure that students were well schooled in academia, but lacking in programmes which planted “the seed of entrepreneurship” within our youth.

However, he noted that the school system could not do it alone, and that broader societal factors within the region needed to be examined.

“We also within this region still have a view that we must send our children to school to get an education and then get a job. We really don’t encourage them enough to become entrepreneurs. We also perhaps invest more in unnecessary material things rather than research and development or simply creating goods and services for others to buy,” he charged.

The Minister also advised that there was a need to desist from thinking that there was an automatic relationship between skin colour and entrepreneurship.

“Too many of us seem to believe that you have to be white, Indian or Chinese to be a successful entrepreneur…Simply put, we really need to stop making excuses and foster a culture of entrepreneurship in the region across all classes and religion,” he urged.

Mr. Inniss emphasised that a lot of work needed to be done to build up entrepreneurship in the small, medium and micro enterprise sector in the region.

theresa.blackman@barbados.gov.bb

Pin It on Pinterest