Dominica’s newly launched Coalition of Service Industries (DCSI) has been underscoring what it calls the enormous potential that the island’s services sector has.
DCSI’s Executive Director Lester Riviere told the launch, where Dominica’s National Export Strategy was officially, formally presented, that between 2008 and 2010, the services sector contribution to Dominica’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was “approximately 50 percent, and in terms of total exports, close to 80 per cent”.
Riviere says the DCSI has already registered 220 service providers, and has been busy signing memorandum of understanding with six existing associations.
However he has acknowledged that the Coalition faces significant challenges because of the wide coverage of the services sector and the vast diversity of interest and stake holders operating in it.
Riviere has suggested that his organization needs government help to effectively export Dominican services regionally and further afield through the Economic Partnership Agreement Dominica and other Caribbean countries signed with the European Union.
“Government needs to provide financial backing for private sector initiatives as much of our service providers don’t have the financial capacity or the base to undertake any growth and development activities” he told the launch of his organization and the National Export Strategy.
“Access to affordable finance” was among what Riviere described as key ingredients to a competitive services sector.
“We have to come to a point in our banking system where banks recognize the ideas of firms as collateral … so there is a need for innovative approaches to financing,” he said.
Its time the banking systems here give young people, young minds and people who want to invest a chance even they dont have a big surnmane, or a millionaire, give them a start. Ideas and investments need financing and i believe the banks here need to give a break to some people a break thats all. Some people genuinely want to make a difference for themselves and families and country.