A new Forest Products Development and Marketing Council (FPDMC) was launched on Tuesday at the Guyana Forestry Commis-sion conference room and five individuals from the government and five from private enterprises would make up the Board and there will be one neutral chairperson.

The board would be intact for two years and there would be a review of the work by the council and a decision would then be made for the way forward, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.

Merlin Udho, acting on behalf of the Board of Directors of the FPDMC, said that the old council was dissolved and the new council is now taking its place.

In attendance at the launching were Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud, officials of the Guyana Forestry Commission, the Guyana Marketing Corporation, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, international agencies, representatives of Amerindian communities and small and medium scale forestry enterprises.

The board is made up of  Saykar Boodhoo, Colin Andrews, Ronald Bulkan,  S.K. Chan and  Girwar Lalaram who all represent private stakeholders while representing government are  Nizam Hassan, James Singh,  Edward Goberdhan, Geoff Da Silva and in the independent chair is Udho.

Minister Persaud was quoted by GINA as saying that the “Government of Guyana’s preference has always been for the establishment of a Council that was industry driven and funded.” 

In the latter part of 2007, there were complaints from stakeholders that the FPMC was not functioning as it should and there were renewed calls for more industry ownership of the Council. And following a national consultation to review the role and functions of the FPMC and coming out of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) a new entity was created -  the Forest Products Development and Marketing Council.

Minister Persaud urged that the industry and especially the Board should look at the supply and try to promote the development of clusters and synergies within the industry. He remarked that the annual production is less than 500,000 m3 and as a result individuals could not compete effectively on the world market. He said that petty issues must be put behind or  “globalization will leave us behind.”

Persaud also highlighted capacity building and expressed  amazement at the number of expatriate workers in the forestry sector because of a lack of local skills to do some of the technical aspects of forestry.

He stated also, GINA reported, that the development of the industry can only be catalyzed by having the requisite skills, continuous training and re-engineering of these skills.