Private sector entities seeking to take advantage of trading opportunities available to Guyanese businesses under Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreements with countries in the hemisphere will benefit from a series of workshops which manufacturers association President Ramesh Dookhoo says are designed to provide participants with “critical information” regarding approaches to doing business with those countries.
And according tp Dokhoo the series of Doing Business With…….. Workshops will begin with a forum on Brazil which he said will be executed ahead of the highly anticipated opening of the Guyana-Brazil road link.
The Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) has released a paper in which it says that the export potential of Guyana’s Free Trade Agreements are not being tapped and Dookhoo told Stabroek Business that he believed that those Agreements are likely to be more fully exploited if local exporters understood more about what it took to access those markets.
The 2004 signing of the Partial Scope Guyana/Brazil Free Trade Agreement has done little to enhance trade between the two countries and the workshop planned by the GMSA will seek to, among other things, determine why the Partial Scope Agreement has not released the new trade, joint venture and investment agreements which it has the potential to do. The Workshop on Doing Business With Brazil will also be seeking to determine whether there are existing niche markets in Brazil which local companies can tap.
The workshop also seeks to give guidance to local exporters regarding accessing government assistance programmes, overcoming constraints to the creation of individual export strategies.
The potential for vastly increased cross-border trade between Guyana and, particularly Northern Brazil has been mooted for decades and even with the road link still incomplete traders from both sides of the border do business mostly at Lethem. These trading ties could accelerate significantly after the road has been formally opened and if the talked about potential deal between the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) and the Brazilian telecommunications company Oi under which Northern Brazil may benefit from the US$60m fibre optic cable being established to convey communication traffic for GT&T and TELESUR of Suriname.
GT&T Chief Exexcutive Officer officer Major General (retd) Joe Singh told Stabroek Business some weeks ago that the creation of the Guyna.Brazil road link enhances the possibility that the fibre optic cable link with Northern Brazil may prove economically feasible.
