RAYNEAU MOVES TO UNSTIFLE THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR

 

ENTREPRENEUR WANTS TO FREE UP CONTRACTORS

One local entrepreneur is aggressively moving to “unstifle” the construction sector by addressing challenges of finance and capital that creates unsettling concerns for small contractors and builders.

Rayneau Gajadhar CEO of the group of companies that comprises, RG Quarry, CIE Limited and his most recent creation, Rayneau Construction & Industrial Products a megastore in Corinth, was asked, what’s your idea?

“It’s not a sale or a stimulus,” said CEO Rayneau Gajadhar, cringing at words tarnished by botched commercial and public sector initiatives.  
 

 

He explains it is his company’s idea is to give small and medium contractors 30 cents back on every dollar they spend. Basically, if VAT made every dollar worth 85 cents the company is prepared to make every construction dollar worth $1.30 cents.

 “What I really want to achieve, starting from before Christmas, is to free up the majority of small players in the construction sector, so that financially, they have more room to breathe. In this business, the margin of profit is not set in stone. Things are changing on a daily basis. So sometimes, you expect to make X-amount of profit and things change on you and suddenly you have a cost increase or a delay that is just eating your profits.”

It’s a costly business move, but Gajadhar thinks it might be the best move for any business that relies on small entrepreneurs who are stifling in the current economic climate.

The economic pressure is on. It has been on for years.

And in spite of the most optimistic projections, the economies of St Lucia and the rest of the Eastern Caribbean only seem to constrict more and more.

It’s especially hard on the agricultural and construction sectors, where thousands of skilled and unskilled labour are suffering the crunch along with contractors and sub-contractors who hire them.

In recent budgets, the government offered a construction stimulus that promised targeted relief to the construction industry, but that stimulus package received mixed reviews by everyone from contractors to suppliers to the president of the St Lucia Media Workers Association.

 

Rayneau CIP was once the new kid on the block.

Now, they're making bold moves that go beyond business as usual.

 

In an episode of DBS’ talk show, The Press Club, Clinton Reynolds noted that in applying the construction stimulus to his own personal home building project, he found that he didn’t make the kind of difference the government promised.

“Down to simple things like nails, I found that the concessions promised by the government were either not implemented or not executed,” he said. “It must be much more frustrating and disappointing for people who are not just building their own home, but who depend on this industry for their livelihood.”

The politicization of several major capital projects has brought great uncertainty to the local sector embroiling suppliers, contractors and workers in questionable, schemes.

For Rayneau Gadjadhar, the politics of the matter are hardly as important as the effect on the hard working people in the construction industry who often work in harsh conditions in order to keep their personal economies afloat.

The progressive local entrepreneur, in assessing the economic hardships faced by his customers, realized that some direct measures had to be taken to pump more oxygen into the small and medium contractors whose hustle is one of the less appreciated pillars of the St Lucian economy.

“When these hard-working people are struggling to get jobs, surviving on delayed payments, stretching out their credit, I can feel it,” Gajadhar said. “I cannot just stand by and let them take their blows. The way I see it, Rayneau Enterprises is not a whole organism. It’s like a heart. And these people, my customers, they are the blood. I have to do something to give them more oxygen, because if they get stifled by the economy, then what happens to me?

“Right now, in this business, for us to survive, we have to make it together. We have to hold each other up when the waves are trying to take us, one by one and wash us out.”

Rayneau Enterprises has established its corporate citizenship brand in a way that no other company in the business has. From humble beginnings the company has worked closely to ensure that social investment is continued. Scholarships, youth development projects and community empowerment projects have all benefited from the young company’s aggressive social investment policy.

Rayneau designed his most recent enterprise, not to compete on price, but to establish what he hopes will the most reliable supply line for construction materials, tools and services in the entire Eastern Caribbean.

“It has to be like the Facebook of small island construction,” Gadjadhar told one reporter in an interview. “You know how Facebook is so reliable that it never goes down no matter how much traffic it gets? Rayneau Enterprises has to be that reliable. Builders have to know that when they can’t find something anywhere else, they can find it here. They don’t have to let bad supply lines and delays eat their profits.”