-Chamber President
More private sector jobs are likely to be lost in the period ahead as the business community continues to make adjustments to their operations in an effort to stave off the worst effects of the ongoing global economic crisis. And there is need for concern over rising unemployment since, apart from its effect of reducing disposable income there was also the danger that fewer jobs could lead to an increase in crime.
The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has been seeking to monitor the unfolding fortunes of the commercial and manufacturing sectors and earlier this week GCCI President Chandradat Chintamani told this newspaper that the manufacturing sector was likely to continue to feel the worst effects of the crisis. “On the commerce side we have been successful in retaining the head count of job losses. Unfortunately, on the manufacturing side we have lost some of the head count there.”
Chintamani said that the greater pressure being felt in the manufacturing sector was due to the fact that shrinking international markets were having a direct impact on the country’s exports.
And while the GCCI continues to examine other areas in which changes can be made in order to stave off further unemployment, Chintamani said that the economic downturn was likely to force many businesses to make “those unfriendly decisions” in order that they can stay in business.
And according to Chintamani “there has been an increase in criminal activity,” adding that this was his ‘biggest fear” since one consequence of increased crime was likely to be reduced social activity that would affect the patronage of restaurants, bars and night clubs. “This would have its own direct effect on the business community,” he said.
Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he expected that the security sector would recognise that it may have “additional responsibility” in the circumstances.
The GCCI President told Stabroek Business that while advertisements in the media provided evidence of job availability in some sectors, many of the workers who were being laid off were probably not qualified to hold those jobs. He said he believed that the impact of the crisis on employment could be lessened through the application of creative solutions by both the public and the private sectors. “I believe, for example, that employers can help enhance the marketability of their workers by helping them to train themselves in various fields including information technology. Perhaps the Ministry of Labour can support such a programme by giving incentives to employers who provide training for their employees,” Chintamani said.
And according to the Chamber President public spending on social projects designed to alleviate the impact of the crisis needed to focus on careful evaluation of how the expenditure could be maximized. “If we can begin to manage the funds spent on social programmes along those lines we can extract a great deal more benefit from them. We need to measure the success of every dollar that we spend. In that way the limited resources that we have could go further,” he added.
And the GCCI President told Stabroek Business that initiatives by the financial sector that set aside “soft loans” designed to respond to “creative business ideas” may also be considered as a job-creation measure. He said that he believed that applications for the financing of such projects in the small business sector should be looked at on a case-by-case basis and that particular attention should be paid to those proposals that reflected prospects for job creation.
Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he had responded positively to an invitation extended to him by the Guyana Youth Business Trust to serve as a mentor to young entrepreneurs. He said that mentoring was about supporting enterprising entrepreneurs in both the acquisition of financing as well as in the setting up of their businesses. “The idea is that these enterprises can help create employment,” he added.
Chintamani said that the limited impact of the reduced flow of remittances on the exchange rate suggested that the extent of reduction in remittance flows to Guyana was not as great as estimates of between 15 per cent and 50 per cent that were being suggested. He said that the sizeable reduction in remittance flows that were being suggested in some quarters would have had a more discernable impact on exchange rates adding that he believed that the actual figure was a single digit one.
