Grenada Today - The National Newspaper of Grenada, Carriacou & Petite Martinique

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell has told participants at the Sixth Venture Point Conference held at the Grand Beach Resort in the south of the island last Thursday that, people in the region need to recognise they all can be entrepreneurs.

Delivering the feature address at the opening of the two day business meeting, the Grenadian leader noted that too many persons see entrepreneurship as opening a business or selling a product and ignore other forms of entrepreneurship.

"The provision of services needs to be considered more by our people. However, we cannot provide services without the necessary skills", Dr Mitchell told the gathering. The Grenadian leader pointed out that Governments need to take a greater role in equipping their citizens with skills by increasing access to training.

Venturepoint 2005 was organised by Venture Capital Incentive Programme (VCIP) of Trinidad and Tobago. It is an initiative developed by the government in the twin island Republic as a result of the direct response to the need to bridge the gap between demand and supply of financial capital in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

The Prime Minister was high in praise for the recently launched Caribbean Knowledge Learning Network (CKLN), an initiative aimed at providing the region with better trained people and create more employment opportunities.
Dr. Mitchell stressed that CKLN will allow more persons to become entrepreneurs since it will give them access to the necessary training that will allow them to offer themselves as consultants, and specialists in one area or another.

"We still have to import too many specialist skills into this region. We need to empower our people to provide more of these specialist skills", he remarked.
Administrator Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Venturepoint Trinidad, Judith Mark in her brief opening remarks said that the issue of capital has to be looked at in a holistic way.

She noted that for businesses in the region to be successful, there has to be a collaborative effort between government, Private sector, Non Governmental Organisations (NGO's) and Academics of the region. Regional Director Eastern Caribbean RBTT Financial Group, David Hackett, who addressed the opening believes that the forum provides an opportunity to develop a nexus of relations between entrepreneurs and financiers.

He expressed the hope that the conference will jointly establish a clear direction for the private sector in Grenada and the region. Presentations were made by several persons including Dr. Patrick Antoine, Strategic Trade Policy Adviser ANSA MCAL, Natalie John, Manager, Registry Issuer & Investor Services Division, Eastern Caribbean Securities Exchange (ECSE), Lisa Harding-Eversley, Senior Project Analyst Caribbean Financial Services Corporation (CFSC) and Lawrence Lambert, Manager Flamboyant Hotel and Villas.

The two day conference was sponsored by RBTT Grenada, Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Caribbean Financial Services Corporation (CSFC), Grenada Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) and the Eastern Caribbean Securities Exchange (ECSE).