Great progress has been made in Guyana’s water and housing sectors over the last 10 years because the Government of Guyana has deliberately built capacity of special agencies dedicated to and focused on each of these. GUYWA was changed and incorporated to GWI, effectively creating a more commercial approach to the water sector, and equipping the agency with a Board of Management and a management structure, human resources and systems that are business oriented. The Government created within the Ministry of Housing a Guyana Housing Authority, again focused on capacity building that would enable the efficient and effective rolling out of what has turned out to be a record- breaking housing drive.
Today, I want to argue that reigniting manufacturing and industrial development in general requires this same capacity building of a specialised institution within the Ministry of Tourism Industry and Commerce that can mobilise engage in tackling head- on the problems in the sector. Let’s recreate a Guyana Manufacturing & Industrial Development Agency under MINTIC. It may be that “industry” got lost in the middle of the TIC!! It needs to be given special attention.
This coordinating agency must be created and given a budget for human resource and for seed capital that can be used to provide inputs for small business in manufacturing, especially agro-processors. And the fund will best serve the needs, if it is Guyanese owned money that comes from central government rather than a donor [development agency] which tends to come with onerous conditions for use. My work on the ground over the last several years, allow me to know that many of the agro-processors have problems related to access to bottles and modern packaging [such as foil insulated] which can be bought economically from China only in bulk.
This means that the purchase has to be made by a coordinating agency. This is the kind of Industrial Agency that is relevant to Guyana’s needs. It must have a locally endowed, owned and managed fund that will allow it to purchase inputs in bulk and then channel them on to small manufacturers/agro-processors at cost.
Last week, we defined industrial policy broadly as “planned and coherent use of government tax, subsidies, procurement and capital instruments to encourage investment or disinvestment”. We wish to add further the World Bank’s definition of industrial policy as “Government action to create productivity based growth”[WB , The East Asian Miracle, 1993”. Both of these concepts underline the central role that Government plays in establishing the capacity and the institutional and incentive basis for raising productivity in a sector. When will manufacturing receive the same level of policy attention that housing, water and now sugar have received?
In the first piece in this series, we had pointed out that stakeholder manufacturers had called for a Standing Working Group to address a strategic approach to manufacturing.
It may be that this Standing Group can serve as the Board for the Industrial Development Agency. And just a reminder of the central importance of manufacturing in utilising the country’s raw materials in agriculture, forestry and fishing.
Guyana is intervening in sugar in massive ways [G$6B in this year’s budget]. Let us start incrementally to move towards a figure like that for manufacturing with funds budgeted from central Government. It will allow for its easier disbursement and use by those who need it.
