JBDC puts access to markets at the centre of small-business support

The Jamaica Business Development Corporation is placing greater emphasis on helping micro, small and medium-sized enterprises find and enter new markets, Radio Jamaica reports. The agency says it is shifting its support toward building the capacity businesses need to reach those opportunities.

The direction follows an earlier high-level meeting involving Daenia Ashpole and representatives of the MSME Alliance, the Small Business Association of Jamaica and the Young Entrepreneurs Association. JBDC’s official appointment notice identifies Ashpole as chief executive officer.

The distinction at the centre of the discussion is between developing entrepreneurial skills and translating that preparation into access to customers. Training can improve how an enterprise is run, while market access concerns whether it can reach buyers for what it produces. The agency’s stated focus connects the preparation of businesses more directly with their ability to enter markets.

Ashpole said the success of support should be measured by its actual effects on enterprises and the economy. She argued that JBDC and the sector’s representative bodies have a responsibility to do work that helps businesses, rather than merely talk about that work.

Cordell Williams, president of the Young Entrepreneurs Association, said significant progress had already been made in developing entrepreneurial skills. Her concern was that access to markets remained a major obstacle for firms.

That assessment gives the proposed direction a specific purpose: skills development is part of business support, but it does not settle the separate difficulty of getting products and services in front of customers. The discussion brings together the agency and organisations representing smaller enterprises around that gap.

The priorities described by Ashpole and Williams are practical business outcomes and the capacity to reach new markets. They acknowledge the preparation already undertaken while shifting attention to the stage at which firms need to turn that preparation into commercial opportunities.