By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation (BAIC) is aiming to help small businesses establish on online and social media presence to boost their visibility both locally and abroad.

BAIC will tomorrow host a workshop facilitated by Kristi Powell, chief executive and founder of Coral, a software start-up focusing on the B2B (business to business) market in the Caribbean. Ms Powell, who is a technical advisor to the Ministry of Finance and heading its digital transformation, has previously worked at worked at Google.

BAIC chairman, Michael Foulkes, in announcing the workshop, said: "As the Government of the Bahamas embarks on a mission to establish particular islands in the archipelago as world-renowned technology hubs, we at BAIC see the need to work with small businesses by directly assisting them with setting themselves up in the worldwide web as well as social media, so that people and other businesses will know that they exist and hopefully increase their business and marketing opportunities both home and abroad."

He added: "There is no doubt that small businesses and their development have a major impact on the Bahamian economy, as they have shown empirically that they have the same effect around the world. That does not mean that being a small business owner is not challenging, because going into business, by its very nature involves risk and risk taking."