SRC to expand capacity to help New & Small Businesses

The SRC is Jamaica’s principal public sector agency, responsible for the fostering and coordination of scientific research and the promotion of its application.

The directive was given by Prime Minister Bruce Golding, to Industry, Investment and Commerce Minister, Karl Samuda, under whose Ministry the SRC falls.

Mr. Golding made the announcement last night (Aug 4) while addressing the closing ceremony of the Culinary Arts Expo put on by the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC), at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. The two-day expo was presented under the theme, “Feeding the family with what we grow’.

Mr. Golding said the SRC had been doing an excellent job, but that there is the need for the Council to reach out to the exhibitors to assist them further in developing the concepts and commercializing their ideas.

He said that between the Denbigh Agricultural and Industrial show, and the JCDC’s Culinary Arts expo, he had witnessed the tremendous creativity, talent and ingenuity of the Jamaican people, which was born out of necessity, with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. He said it was time for this creativity to move beyond exhibiting and sampling.

‘We are good at setting up pilot projects but there is no point in having pilots and no passengers. We need to move beyond exhibiting, to capture the markets out there, to create jobs and by extension, wealth,’ Mr. Golding said.

He has challenged the various government agencies to co-ordinate their activities so that they would all be aware of what each is doing. He congratulated the JCDC on the high standards of the exhibits and the Minister of Culture, Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange, for working hard towards fulfilling her mission of bringing back the festivity to the annual festival.

Mr. Golding said that over the years, the annual festival had been overtaken by other high profile entertainment events but one of the outstanding features of the festival is that it reaches down to the most rural districts and goes across the length and breadth of the entire Jamaica, therefore no other event could take its place.

Mr. Golding said while he is aware that the festival will not return to its full glory within just one year, he has mandated Minister Grange to build it up so that by year 2012, when Jamaica will be celebrating its 50th independence anniversary, the festival will be back in full gear.