This week’s disclosure that a delegation comprising representatives of sixteen Jamaican companies will be visiting Guyana later this month to pursue what has been described as “mutually beneficial business opportunities,” is a development of note that ought not to be allowed to pass without public comment.
The first thing that should be said is that this will probably be the largest ever Jamaican business delegation to visit Guyana in recent memory and perhaps even in our entire history. The fact, too, that there are sixteen companies that will be represented in that delegation sends an unmistakable signal that the Jamaican business community, arguably the most mature and experienced in the Caribbean, sees myriad opportunities for the deepening of relations with Guyana. These are evidently tied to Guyana’s new-found status as a world-class oil producer.
No less significant is the fact that it is the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) that will be hosting the Jamaicans and here it has to be said that while the Jamaican team will come here looking for business opportunities, the engagements will also afford the GCCI an opportunity to enhance its own domestic and external profiles, given what we know to be the high regard in which the Jamaican business community is held here in the region and in the United States. In a sense, the visit could well amount to a kind of ‘coming of age’ for a local Chamber of Commerce which, over the years, has experienced peaks and troughs in its performance.
Then there is the further signal sent by this visit that the advent of oil & gas as an economic factor, has raised the profile of Guyana within CARICOM. Time was, not too long ago, where our country’s regional and international business profile would have been unlikely to attract a visit from what, it would seem, will be a ‘weighty’ delegation from Kingston.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, there has always existed within CARICOM a kind of jockeying for position, an unspoken rivalry for the premier profile in the region, the state of the respective economies and the success of the business sectors being the barometer with which to determine the ratings. Trinidad and Tobago, with its petro dollars and Barbados with its successful tourism sector had sustained high profiles. Jamaica, through the sheer industry of its business sector, its repeated success in penetrating difficult United States markets, attracting outside investments and building highly successful enterprises in North America has, however, maintained the highest profile of all. Guyana, as is generally known, had, over time, come to be seen as the regional underachiever.
Oil & gas it would seem, promises to interfere with the pecking order and the impending visit here by the Jamaican delegation, which would have been preceded by a putting together of heads amongst some of the shrewdest business brains in the region, points to an acknowledgement that Guyana is heading in the direction of repositioning itself in that pecking order.
We are told that the GCCI has already notified its members that one of the objectives of the visit is to foster collaborative business relationships and to promote mutual growth and development opportunities for the Jamaican and Guyanese economies, through increased trade and commerce. The open-endedness of the description of the delegation’s mission is more than sufficient to cause informed analysts to conclude that this visit seeks to paint with a broad brush and that it could mark a definitive turning point in business relations between Guyana and Jamaica, a circumstance which is more than likely to ‘turn heads’ in the region, given the successful international track record of the Jamaican business community.
At this juncture there is the considerable likelihood that several other CARICOM territories will have their businessmen and women follow, first Trinidad and Tobago, and now, Jamaica, into Guyana. Truth be told there have been interludes in intra-CARICOM relations that have been soured by ill will and Guyana has been at the unfortunate end of less than good treatment in some countries in the region. The reality is, however, that our own historic role in the creation of CARICOM holds us up to high standards and if our considerable good fortune can be shared with the region to which we are tied by history, customs and culture, then why not? After all, as a nation, we are big enough. Aren’t we?
