By: Staff Writer
June 28, 2022
The Caribbean Export Development Agency hosted a webinar for the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Day
Mr. Ronald Ramjattan, chief executive officer of Baron Foods in St Lucia, said at the webinar that: “Over the last few years, the landscape has definitely changed. I will say just in St. Lucia alone, the amount of smaller businesses from individuals that we saw come up because of COVID has been a lot.
“Surprisingly, they were doing very well and even taking on some of the larger entities in the restaurant industry. For example, the amount of smaller food entities which had come about as a result of COVID is a lot.”
2020 and 2021 was marred by significant disruptions to lives and livelihoods due to COVID-19, however agencies Caribbean Development Bank and the Inter-American Bank, put their MSME units to work and provided support for the region. The CDB was foremost as it has done a great deal to prepare businesses across the region to respond to the new challenges of the marketplace.
Companies like Baron had enough wherewithal to weather the storm on strategic thinking and realigning business practices to meet the COVID-19 challenge head on.
Within Baron’s scope and because of the many of the products they had to market, they were considered “an essential company,” during the COVID-19 pandemic which, “allowed us to remain operational, while adhering to all the health guidelines for the last two years. This meant we could have maintained supply for both the local and international markets,” Mr Ramjattan said.
He also said: “After analysing some of these trends in the supply chain issues, we had to re-evaluate how we began to purchase raw packaging materials, especially from our overseas suppliers.
“This meant we had to purchase a lot of these raw packaging materials in bulk and to be more precise, for different container loads, because when you go directly sourcing from the manufacturers that is some of their requisites. So this in turn allowed our pricing to remain competitive and we were always guaranteed to have good inventory levels.”
Ayanna Young Marshall, Lecturer in International Business at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, also said that there have been “silver threads” running through her work at the University in “resilience and sustainability.” She added that these are themes that are a part of the UWI’s strategic focus too and it is a “priority” of hers.