It has been a busy week that started with the inaugural meeting of the Small Business Economic Forum formed by the new Small Business Minister Mark Prisk. The forum brought together banks and business representatives, among them the Institute of Credit Management, with a remit to 'share their views with Ministers on enterprise issues, in particular economic issues facing small firms'.
What we learned from the first forum is that there is a continuing divide between banks' and business organisations' perceptions as regards to what extent the banks are lending. That, in itself, was not a surprise, but perhaps more of a surprise was the lack of any sign of a solution. In short, it is an issue that is unlikely to go away.
Whether the forum will be successful or not, I do not know. We can only do our best to ensure that it is. Certainly Mr Prisk is of the view that the forum should produce actions, not just words, and that is encouraging. It was good to be invited and welcomed by the new Coalition, and a good opportunity to share views across a wide spectrum of organisations. It was encouraging too to see the engagement of the Business Secretary Vince Cable who joined the meeting in the latter stages to lend his support. http://bit.ly/c3umbH
As I write, I have just finished listening to the statement by George Osborne regarding the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). It was a good, if rare, opportunity to listen to a whole speech. It went on for more than an hour and it was hard to get too much detail and that is a pity, for it is in the detail that the devil will be.
Little he said was totally unexpected: 490,000 predicted public sector job losses were in line with predictions, and the impact of people losing jobs, or jobs left vacant, and people entering the market as self-employed will be huge. My worry - and one that I expressed at the Equifax/RBS Exchange Day in London, is that too many start-ups fail to get the basics right. Too many of them are trying to sell the wrong product, or are in the wrong place, or both, and the cuts will produce a large number of people who think they can use their redundancy cheque as a means to fulfill a long-held dream. Sadly, for many, the dream will turn into a nightmare and credit professionals are going to have the challenge of spotting the stars and avoiding the dangers.
For more information about the Institute of Credit Management visit http://www.icm.org.uk/ or follow ICM on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/icmorg.
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