Hinterland, coastal small businesses being strangled by official neglect

Our ongoing editorial focus on small businesses in agriculture, agro processing and on hinterland business ventures (gold being the notable exception here) is that we believe that setting aside its other pursuits the media have a responsibility to stand behind these enterprises at a time when the repercussions of COVID-19 threaten their survival and by extension, the welfare of the owners and their dependents. This is not the first time in the course of this series of articles that we have made the point that, historically, not the state, the private sector bodies or the lending sector have, paid sufficient attention to the growth of these entities.

 When it comes to providing support government, historically, has been as much about lip service as about practical help. The contribution of the private sector bodies has been mostly one of benign indifference.

The situation with regard to those small, struggling hinterland projects which we continue to cover is particularly heart-rending. It is irksome to know that so little continues to be done for groups of people who need so much. It, perhaps, has not dawned on our political leaders over the years that Guyana’s persistent and altogether erroneous claim to food security will remain unsustainable if it cannot be applied to some Amerindian communities on the grounds of either the amount of food available to those communities or the nutritional value of what they consume.

To take a more holistic view of these micro and small businesses, whether they be on the coast or in the hinterland, the truth is that, on the whole, there is not sufficient interest in their growth. It makes no sense in staring agog at the marvels of the small business sector in other countries and making comparisons, without troubling ourselves to measure the staggering gap in terms of support between those at which we marvel and our own. Paltry official and private sector patronage offered much more for show than for sustenance will not cut it.

If we neglect to invest in infrastructure for agriculture and various types of manufacturing in the hinterland, if we do not provide the financing and technical support, the training and the transport links that allow them to move their products to market on the coast and beyond and if we do not aggressively help to   market their products abroad they will simply exist, subsist, stagnate then disappear.

The physical location of the urban small businesses position them to fare marginally better. Since the overarching problems are roughly the same, however, these too, in the longer term, will share the same fate. We believe, for example, that it is a matter of abject shame that after all the effort that has been made by the coastal agro processing businesses, particularly though not exclusively, to rise, over the past five years or so, neither the state nor the Business Support Organizations had bothered themselves, either individually or collectively, to put together some kind of strategic plan to help see them through the pressures of COVID-19.

We have, previously, (and we do so again) strenuously advocated not just the decoupling of the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) and the Guyana Shop from the bureaucratic grip of the Ministry of Agriculture, but the enhanced empowerment of the GMC  to have free rein (and of course the accompanying technical skills) to play a greater role in opening up opportunities for expanding both the local and external markets for  farm produce as well as agro produce. We say again that if a refashioned GMC is to significantly serve the purpose for which it was created then government must hasten to detach it from the apron strings of the Ministry of Agriculture. The Guyana Shop, its ever-trying but hobbled offspring has to be elevated to the level of a modern commodity outlet or it will never rise to the level that it can.

It is the same, one feels, with the Small Business Bureau. It is clearly understood that it is a state-run agency with particular kinds of responsibilities for promoting the growth of small businesses though technical advice, product promotion, marketing support and other kinds of interventions like those that had recently been put in place to provide Covid-19-related funding for its clients. That being said there is really no good reason why a Small Business Bureau that is competently served by technical staff and a clear-cut agenda should be shackled to the ankle of a government ministry which may well have a thorough lack of appreciation for the real nature of its mission.

Then there are the Business Support Organizations. Periodically, there have been various high-profile excursions into ‘collaboration,’ notably by the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA). It would, however, be hardly surprising if the small and micro businesses that participate in these events were to come to think of them as tokenistic. These occasional interventions apart, the energies of our BSO’s would appear to have been saved for the oil and gas industry, the returns from which they have unwaveringly attached the highest priority.

To return, briefly, to the hinterland-based business ventures (mostly in the agro-processing and craft sectors) where exposure to markets on the coast is critical to their well-being, it is no secret that some kind of highly subsidized arrangement for the movement of Amerindian goods closer to coastal markets (coupled of course with aggressive product promotion) by air, sea and land may well provide a game-changer for low-achieving Amerindian small businesses…and yet, as far as we are aware, this matter is yet to be addressed in a serious and structured manner. 

Strategic interventions that seek to change the fortunes of existing micro and small businesses in Amerindian communities has to begin from a perspective that transcends patronage and political posturing. It has to start with an understanding that the fostering of an enhanced business culture in Amerindian communities is directly linked not just to raising standards of living in those communities and fostering a transformative entrepreneurial culture but on removing the stigma (whether we concede it or not) of our First People as a now patronized people.

There are some similarities here with coastal micro and small businesses. Most of these have arisen out of circumstances that derive from impoverishment and the need to seek out more viable livelihoods for families. These too, in different ways, are afflicted by inadequate official support that threaten their survival.