According to a media release issued by the Ministry of Human Services & Social Security on Friday last, the Government of Guyana has set a timeline for the establishment of “several micro enterprise driven projects at the grassroots level… to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of diplomatic ties between Guyana and the People’s Republic of China in 2022,” from which it is hoped that “tangible results” will accrue.
In circumstances where “micro enterprise driven projects” account for a significant percentage of local employment and, by extension, provide sustenance for at least many hundreds of families, a project of this nature almost always ‘catches the eye’ of this newspaper and causes it to raise questions about the details of such projects and the extent to which our small and micro enterprises are likely to benefit in a sustainable way from such initiatives.
Since it is not uncommon for the details of projects of this nature to be placed in the public domain at virtually the last moment, it would be comforting to know whether the collaborators in Georgetown and Beijing propose to create and make public, at some reasonably early stage, the template for this initiative as well as the conditions to be met by potential beneficiaries, never mind the fact that its fructification appears to materialise sometime around the aforementioned anniversary period.
One makes this point as a prelude to wondering aloud as to whether whatever is being proposed will take account of those existing small businesses, many, perhaps most of which have had their considerable COVID-19 related challenges and can do with a ‘hand up’ at this time or whether the project is intended to target small business aspirants. It would be useful, as well, to have the Chinese say, in good time, just what are the conditionalities that come with what one assumes will be grants. These offers, as we are only too well aware, never come without ‘strings attached’.
Two further points should be made at this juncture. The first has to do with the extent of the scope that the Guyana side will have to help fashion whatever agreement is realised based on local understanding of what could work best for our micro-enterprise sector and whether or not the Chinese offer will be coming with the requisite technical support that customarily attends initiatives of this kind.
One might add that the Chinese themselves are hardly unaware of what, of late, has been the enhanced hemispheric strategic significance of Guyana, having regard to its recently ‘acquired’ oil resources and, presumably, will be keen to press such a project into service to help illuminate both its interest and its influence here in Guyana and in the wider region.
Initiatives of this nature are frequently placed on the plate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for effective execution (the presence of a diplomatic mission in Beijing should help here) since outside of our diplomats there are few local functionaries (given the language and other barriers that exist) who can engage the Chinese effectively. It has to be said as well that given what has already been explained is the importance of such a project to Guyana, it would be in the interest of the functionaries on our side to demonstrate an aggressive interest in the project, since any bilateral agreement with China that meaningfully benefits the poor and the unemployed and underemployed will redound to the benefit of the political administration.
On the other hand it has to be said that agreements of this nature have not always – for one reason or another – borne meaningful fruit or, for that, matter, sustained themselves sufficiently to redound to the long-term gain of the beneficiaries.
What inheres in this initiative is, among other things, the diplomatic proclivity of the Chinese for blowing their own trumpet, which, after all, (and whatever arguments might be made to the contrary) is perhaps the primary function of diplomacy, particularly in the patently obvious circumstance of big-power jousting in the hemisphere. All that being said, it is for government to seek to secure from any such agreement with the Chinese, as much traction as it can for the micro and small business sector in Guyana. It will take sustained attention and effort since, presumably, the initiative is intended to fructify closer to the anniversary of half a century of diplomatic ties. Still, if the Minister and the Ministry get this right it is likely to accrue to their longer-term credit
