Protracted legal battles being waged by local importers and distributors to retain the good reputation of the authentic products they deal in by confronting the issues of counterfeit imports and product dumping frontally, tackling the long-standing issue of the dredging of the Demerara Navigational Channel and creating increased marketing opportunities for locally produced goods in foreign markets are among the areas in which the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) realized little if any success despite its lobbying efforts last year.
And while the second quarter of last year saw the visit here of a Buyers Mission comprising five Canadian importers meeting with growers and agro-processors no major trade agreements were realized.
These were among the disclosures made in the address by outgoing Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) President Clinton Williams at the Association’s Annual General Meeting on Friday last.
And while Williams told the gathering that the absence of a 2015 budget presentation has precluded a public pronouncement on the performance of the country’s manufacturing sector in 2014, he said it is likely that the sector may have surpassed its 2013 performance last year.
“From available information today, it may be safe to say that these growth figures have improved, especially with the boom in the rice industry and the building and construction sector. We’re hoping that the statistics for the entire services sector would have risen above the 22.6 per cent growth recorded in 2013,” Williams declared in remarks at last Friday’s Annual General Meeting of the Association.
In 2013, the manufacturing sector had grown by 8 per cent overall and recorded “a solid 5.4 percent growth, … an increase of some 1.4 per cent over the statistics recorded in the past few years,” he added.
In his address Williams proffered “a brief synopsis” of the Association’s “interventions” under what he described as its “mission” to serve as “a critical link between the manufacturing and services sectors and the relevant governmental and parastatal agencies listing among other things the creation of a Revised National Development Strategy for Manufacturing and Standards,” the strengthening of the GMSA’s relationship with the EU-funded trade promotion body Caribbean Export, participation in a recent trade and investment market study among Guyana, Suriname and Brazil the primary objective of which was the identification of reciprocal market opportunities in these three countries for each other’s products and participation in a regional forum on Cariforum’s performance in the areas of economic growth, export competitiveness, export diversification, the role of the private sector in economic development, branding and intellectual property rights, access to finance, innovation, conformance to international standards and global logistics and shipping.
Alluding to areas of what he described as “minimal success” for the GMSA, Williams cited the Association’s “collaboration” with the Canadian Executive Services Organization (CESO) and the Trade Facilitation Office to facilitate local agro-processors and Arts and Craft producers. “Unfortunately the very detailed project that the Canadian organizations had conceived to improve the export readiness of our processed products was only minimally successful,” Williams said. “Minimal success” was also realized in the “three-year Capacity Building Project with CESO and the TFO, according to Williams though two Canadian importers who visited Guyana under the project concluded trade agreements with local producers.
In his address Williams also alluded to the local Energy Efficiency Project, jointly funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the GMSA which ended last year and which he said had had a positive outcome. Williams said that apart from now being equipped with “Energy Auditing and Surveying equipment and instruments that are available for rental to the business community,” the GMSA has been able to “establish workable standards for better energy management in different types of operations.” He said that to keep the energy issue on “the front burner” the GMSA is continuing to engage several foreign organizations for funding and technical support.
