Invest SVG, in collaboration with Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA), has announced the three St. Vincent-based businesses selected to benefit from the High Export Potential (HiExPo) Programme.
The finalists are LinkUp – co-founded and owned by Anthony George and Kenna Questelles-George; Olive Art Designs – founded and owned by Christal Oliver; and Grenadine Wild Sea Salt — founded and owned by Jerry Simpson.
The HiExPo Programme, which will see Invest SVG and CEDA working with the finalists over a two-year period, aims to strengthen the capacity of the selected small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to export to new markets and increase their global competitiveness.
Invest SVG Deputy Executive Director Nadine Agard-Juillerat congratulated the finalists, and expressed eagerness to witness the transformation and development that the selected businesses will undergo through this programme.
“They were chosen via our partnership with Caribbean Export, and there is a [diagnostic] tool that they utilise to narrow down applicants based on the information submitted,” Agard-Juillerat explained.
LinkUp is a technology and marketing business which features a mobile application that makes it easier to find skilled professionals, businesses, restaurant menus and events in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Olive Art Designs is a fashion business with a focus on the design and manufacturing of women’s and men’s bags.
Grenadine Wild Sea Salt is a gourmet salt brand boasting six varieties harvested from the waters surrounding Bequia. FDA testing has shown that it has lower sodium and chloride content than the world’s leading brands.
The concept of the HiExPo Programme came about after CEDA assessed the business environment in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and found that despite there being “significant potential for SMEs… to capitalise on new, global market opportunities to broaden and diversify the country’s export base”, local businesses are challenged by “limited access” to business development training and targeted support services.
Invest SVG hosted the launch of the HiExPo Programme on Feb. 23, which was attended by Chris McNair, CEDA’s manager of Competitiveness and Export Promotion.
At the launch, he explained that a programme similar to HiExPo had started in Jamaica 15 years ago — and has since seen many success stories.
“We assess you, we find out where the gaps are and we… provide support,” he said.
“We take you to the market and we introduce you to the kind of channels that allows you to maximise on your products.
“The programme is about finding the diamonds in the rough.”
This is absolutely such great news and I’m proud of these entrepreneurs and the program….. This is the kind of progress and mindset I have eluded to over and over in my comments. The ppl and the business sectors have to be able to take the initiative on their own. They’re are many wants out there in our country so we are the ones have to filled these voids period.
If I said I had and still have a business idea like this planned for SVG ppl may doubt.
Only positive minded ppl can move this country forward free of political bias.
Ben let’s hear you praise these efforts
I hope these entrepreneurs hire good legal representation also .
For your part Al you may wish to comment on Duke DeArment post of April 25, 2018 in which the short comings of our U.L.P government was noted.
Duke DeArment post of April 25, 2018 drew attention to the causes of our stagnation and made note of Supply-Side Economics where taxes, fees, duties are lowered to encourage investment.
And further stated Al that; You may want to ask yourself why it is so difficult to get investors to come to SVG. If they do come they all leave very soon afterwards. Our system of concessions is not only unfair, it does not mean the best survive, only those that get special favours.
Our government Al have over the years that they have been in power, have shown nothing but contempt and disdain for the few Small Business Enterprises that exist here (the BIGGER BIGGS affair is a very good example) in preference for higher and higher taxation and international begging in order to run our half dead economy.
Do you wish us to believe Al that there has been a sudden Road to Damascus conversion on the part of the leadership of the U.L.P?
Are we now to expect from the regime a drive in the promotion of S.M.Es here, coupled with the lowering of Taxes?
May one ask, is our esteemed leader now a convert to Friedrich August Heyek Al? And has the regime turned away from its bad ways of gross nepotism, crony capitalism, failed Castroisation and Chavez politics to reading the works of the economists Robert Mundell and Herbert Stein?
The hole underneath the ground you pop up out of… Go back under. The wrong person you coming for.
Get this straight. 1. I’m not a supporter of any one party. 2. I’m not a politician. 3. I DON’T GIVE A
F…. ABOUT WHAT YOUR COCERN ARE OR PROBLEMS WITH THE ULP OR REGIME OR WTF EVER YOU CALL IT. 4. GO GET COUNSELING IF YOU CAN’T DEAL WITH IT. 5. HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!
I’m merely congratulatimg these three entrepreneurs on the personal accomplishments and this ppl… Want to spew their political venom on independent good hearted individuals. Smfh
Your responses Al clearly demonstrates your inability to answer the questions posed. You could quite easily have replied with a simply, yes or no or even I never intended for my comment to be so interpreted or construed!
However, your vigorously vulgar vehement outburst, indicating your most high and mighty stance, tells me that you are most ill-equipped to deal with any positive enquiry into your belief system. Perhaps you may be well better suited to a rum bar brawl.
For your information, here is the post by Duke DeArment of April 25, 2018, referred to earlier:
( https://www.iwnsvg.com/2018/04/19/uk-to-set-up-diplomatic-post-in-svg/ )
I hazard a guess, that that you may yet need more academic learning dear Al!
What’s academic about what you stated boy…lol
I clearly you suffer from the Stockholm syndrome that infest your your God given abilities to think and have knowledge. How do you think the Egyptians build the pyramids,.??
Even the acclaimed academic genius Einstein said…. EDUCATION IS NOT THE LEARNING OF FACTS , IT’S RATHER THE TRAINING OF THE MIND TO THINK!!
Additionally, a core doctrine of Spinozism is that the universe is essentially deterministic. All that happens or will happen could not have unfolded in any other way. Spinoza claimed that the third kind of knowledge, intuition, is the highest kind attainable. More specifically, he defined this as the ability for the human intellect to intuit knowledge based upon its accumulated understanding of the world around them.
Your very poor attempt at portraying wisdom Al, reveals even further to us, your self-same lack of it Al.
Give it up! You are making yourself look more like a piece of sponge, and we all know that a piece of sponge does not have any brains!
You sound like an empty barrel… You need validity from an audience to have confidence. And that clearly shows your low self-esteem and advice you to seek counseling for that and any other attributes thereof. Wisdom is seeing through shams that ppl like yiu try so hard to perpetrate on the ppl and I can clearly see through you and your shams.
……. That’s putting it nicely lol .
Here is wisdom for life journey Al! A headland, jutting out into the Sea, is never ever moved by the buffeting of those powerful waves that comes its way from the Sea and neither am I with any surprises that comes my way, when they comes! Therefore, I would hardly likely to be in need of validity from an audience to have confidence ., in any utterances.
Further Al, a sentry on duty, never needs any to award a hello greeting nor any to bid goodbye, and neither do I. Stoicism dear Al! Stoicism! Learnt from my parents at an early age!
This much I am most certain of at this point in time Al is that, you for your part, have not yet achieved even one tenth of what I have thus so far achieved in this life, therefore, I am hardly the person to be of low self-esteem nor ever likely to be the candidate in need of counselling!
You however Al, through your interchanges here, sponging in and sponging out, that which you do not really understand, and by so doing, your demonstrating to us, your great and terrible needs, being a very poor specimen of humanity. Adrift, with full knowledge of your very little worth to the rest of us, hence your torrid outburst!
Continue hiding behind your computer screen that serves you well. Your ramblings are of someone on a verge of a nervous breakdown .
The ULP clearly have you under pressure lmao
The U.L.P you say Al and having one under pressure? That could never, never be the case with me, for reasons I would not here disclose to you Al! Suffice to tell you Al that the likelihood of that ever happening, is absolutely zero!
However, I do feel sorrowful for the nation and its state of squalor, poverty, exploitation through mass ignorance and the added state of helplessness among so many here, many who exist within an environment of anomie and despair, through want.
Governments, whether in Canada or SVG, have a poor track record of picking business winners and losers. In Canada, Bombardier, a Quebec company, has been supported with grants, tax concessions, and subsidies for decades and is still in desperate financial shape.
How much help did Apple, Facebook, Google, General Motors, and countless companies get from the American government when they were small start-up companies? None.
The government should get out of the way and let the marketplace select business winners and losers.
All that these projects accomplish is to make work for idle government bureaucrats.