Unquestionably, GuyExpo usually generates a considerable measure of public interest. Most of the major local private sector enterprises display their goods and services, there is some measure of participation by regional and international exhibitors and buyers in the event, it is usually opened with much fanfare by the President and crowds, large crowds of people make the journey to Sophia every day – mostly in the evenings – to witness and be part of the spectacle.
The real impact of GuyExpo, of course, cannot be measured by the numbers of Guyanese who visit the exhibition since one assumes that the real significance of the event reposes in its outcomes in terms of agreements made between buyers and sellers that impact on the expansion of regional and international markets for local products. Here, the potential beneficiaries of GuyExpo include producers in the agricultural, agro-processing, timber and timber products and handicraft sectors. In that sense, GuyExpo has the potential to significantly change the fortunes of local business ventures that may have otherwise been challenged in terms of accessing external markets as well as those that might have been seeking to build on existing markets.
This of course is not to say that GuyExpo does not hold some measure of significance for local visitors to the event. There is some measure of emphasis on leisure and relaxation and accommodation is even made for children’s entertainment. That apart, there is a significant local market for products and services in the housing sector, for example, and if the recent Housing Expo is anything to go by, the commercial banks, home builders, building materials and hardware suppliers are more likely than not to be part of this year’s GuyExpo.
And yet it has to be said that our main interest in GuyExpo has been in the extent to which it has put local sellers and foreign buyers together and that that is the principal reason why many of our local exhibitors – particularly in the aforementioned sectors go there.
Another important aspect of the GuyExpo event is the fora organized by the Guyana Office For investment (Go-Invest) that bring local producers and foreign potential buyers together to ‘talk business.’ This, in a sense, is the real essence of GuyExpo since it is here, presumably, that possibilities are examined and agreements – mostly in principle – are made, perhaps to be concretized at a later stage. Without suggesting that the ‘show’ itself is not of any significance, it is these fora that provide the real barometer of the success of GuyExpo, bearing in mind what its principal objectives are.
And yet we have had to grow accustomed to a kind of ‘head count’ measurement tendered, it seems, as an indication of the success of GuyExpo. It is a good thing that thousands of people attend GuyExpo and that says a lot for its attractiveness and its popularity with Guyanese. In the final analysis, however, it seems that much more emphasis should be placed on reporting on those issues that have to do with the real purpose of the event. This should go beyond simply making public the ‘interest’ expressed in one or another local product or service by an overseas buyer. Reporting should embrace a comprehensive assessment of all of the deals struck, agreements signed and potential agreements to be followed up through further discourse between and among the parties. In the longer term some effort should even be made to establish linkages between those successful agreements that ultimately lead to expanded and sustained markets for local products and services, and the origins of those agreements at GuyExpo. That kind of reporting would tell us a great deal more about the extent to which GuyExpo is serving its intended purpose.
