By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Government employees must be "made to understand the urgency of entrepreneurs" to obtain essential permits and approvals, a Bahamian businesswoman argued yesterday.

Santina McKinney, Mediabox Bahamas co-founder and chief executive, told a webinar organised by the TCL Group that staff at public sector agencies need to be "trained and sensitised" to the importance of expediting approvals for bona fide projects and ventures given the economic devastation inflicted by COVID-19.

"In our specific market the Government does have concessions for small business owners, but quite often for lack of a better term it's a run around," she explained. "A paper that takes a day to finish takes two to three weeks to process.

"It's actually the line workers, the workers in the government agencies, that need to be trained and sensitised that entrepreneurs at this time need to be getting quicker and more efficient service."

Ms McKinney said this would make the process "less stressful for entrepreneurs", as she urged government workers to see the private sector and its requirements as a benefit rather than "a burden".

"I can speak to this personally," she added. "There are persons in government agencies that need to understand the urgency of entrepreneurs."

Quinn Russell, co-founder and marketing director of Louis & Steen’s New Orleans Coffeehouse, told the webinar he was "in the middle of construction" as part of an expansion to another location. He called on the Government to provide entrepreneurs such as himself, who were growing their businesses and creating jobs, with VAT and duty breaks equivalent to their foreign investor counterparts.

Meanwhile, Brandon Kemp, co-founder of Tin Ferl, the pop-up market based in the grounds of the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts on Mackey Street, urged Bahamians to "go back to the basics" of honesty, hard work and authenticity. He argued that "we lack these characteristics" at many levels of Bahamian society.

Mr Kemp added that Bahamian entrepreneurs generally "'spend so much time working around the system and trying to make it work for us", with processes that "could operate smoothly" when it came to obtaining permits and approvals failing to do so.

He was especially critical of Bahamian banks when it came to processes and technology, even though their affiliates in other countries had already embraced such reforms.

Ms McKinney said Bahamian entrepreneurs also too often shied away from joint venture partnerships and allowing outside investors to inject capital. Too many, she added, are guilty of "jumping straight in" without properly planning their businesses, or "give up" at the first sign of trouble. Unrealistic financial projections and lack of organisation were other common problems.