With the rampaging COVID-19 having quite possibly snuffed out the entrepreneurial ambitions of large numbers of Guyana’s emerging agro-processors and seriously dimmed the enthusiasm of a great many more, twenty-two-year-old Kelshine Griffith who was named the Stabroek Business’ Agro Processor of the Year at the end of 2019 has an impressive grasp of the situation. While she believes that nothing could have been done to ‘dodge the bullet’ of COVID-19, she cites what she believes has been the protracted ignoring by the state of the implementation of policies and initiatives that could have found small agro-processors in a much stronger position than that in which they find themselves today. Her particular peeve, she says, is what has been the yawning gap between the official rhetoric towards growing the agro-business sector and the glaring deficiencies that inform the reality.
