An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

suggestions on potential training/course offerings for the future development of the CARIFORUM

Private Sector. In total, the research team engaged in national stakeholder meetings with 9 in

country BSO organisations and heads of relevant regional organizations over a 3-week period.

2.2 Data Presentation and Discussion of Findings

This section presents and discusses the findings from the primary data collection efforts, notably

(i) the survey instrument which was distributed among private sector firms across CARIFORUM

states, and (ii) the virtual consultations with relevant stakeholders including heads of business

support organizations and regional institutions.

2.2.1. Survey Results and Findings

A total of 513 useable employer surveys were collected from across the 15 CARIFORUM states.

Yet as noted in Section 3.1.1. only 8 of the 15 countries met their minimum quota of surveys,

notably Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Kitts and

Nevis and Suriname.

Most of the surveyed businesses were based in Trinidad and Tobago (13.5%), followed by

Suriname, Guyana, and Dominica, each accounting for 10.4% (see Figure 2). Few businesses

reported multiple bases of operation, with some identifying subsidiaries within and even outside

of the region (USA, Spain, UK, and the Netherlands). Almost 75% of the surveyed businesses

were micro-enterprises with registered workforces of 10 or less employees, while 10.7% of

surveyed respondents registered a workforce exceeding 100 employees (see Figure 3). Based on

the International Finance Corporation’s MSME categorization, when using number of employees

as the indicator, microenterprises are considered those with less than 10 employees, and medium

sized enterprises as those having between 50-300 employees (IFC 2013). Therefore, when

considering that MSMEs account for 70-85% of Caribbean businesses (Mahraj 2021), their

dominance in Figure 3 is not surprising.

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