While this is not the first time that relatively young persons have been elected to lead the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), one senses, this time around, an infusion of collective enlightenment amongst the relatively young team that has been chosen to head the Chamber in the period ahead.
The role of the Chamber, as we understand it, is to promote policies that will help member businesses become more profitable and to help (along with the other BSO’s) form the glue that enables linkages between the state and the private sector insofar as these are necessary for the economic advancement of the country.
Over time the Chamber has also been involved in supporting promotional initiatives for member businesses and lobbying government for policy changes which it believes will help create a more convivial sectorial or general business environment.
It is, for example, not surprising that the GCCI has been playing a visible role in the national discourse on Local Content whilst simultaneously lobbying government to create an all-round enhanced environment in which to do business.
If one were to allude to what can be considered one of the weaknesses of the Chamber – and this extends across the swathe of local Business Service Organisations (BSO) – it is the distinct and frankly, unacceptable paucity of women in leadership positions, notwithstanding the fact that there are highly capable women heading businesses in Guyana.
Previous exchanges between this newspaper and the GCCI have given rise to some interesting issues, not least, whether the Chamber is prepared to provide focussed representation and support for micro and small businesses possibly through the creation of a vibrant arm to do so or whether it would be prepared to support the creation of a broad-based and vibrant body to represent the interests of micro and small businesses.
Frankly, we unapologetically iterate that micro and small businesses continue to benefit from ineffective representation in the corridors of power in Guyana and that this is even now, threatening the survival of these businesses under the strain of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic.
Those who are familiar with the ways of private sector bureaucracy can hardly pretend to be unaware not just of its clannish character, but also of its unscripted pecking order in which the Private Sector Commission (PSC) stands at the apex. It is hardly by accident that much of the leadership of the PSC have had to work its way up from the GCCI. This has ensured that in many respects, the local private sector has, by and large, spoken with a single voice; not only that, but the private sector as a whole has always been aware of the political realities of Guyana and have, to a large extent, behaved accordingly.
It has, as well, been accused of a chauvinism (with which we concur) in the matter of women in its leadership and indeed it might be argued that the creation in recent years of a handful of business organisations that seek to mobilise women might well represent a less than subtle signal of gender frustration with the protracted exclusion of women from the decision making apex of our BSOs.
If the new leadership of the GCCI does not reflect a shift from what, by and large, has been our BSO’s overwhelmingly chauvinistic position in relation to women in leadership positions, it at least appears to signal something of an acknowledgement that there is a need to shake off at least some of the conservatism that has persisted in private sector decision-masking.
In an editorial not so many weeks ago, the Stabroek Business made the point that given what we estimate to be the quite a few thousands of small businesses of one sort or another across Guyana, our BSOs must of necessity set aside their exclusionist posture. That, we believe, goes doubly for the Chamber and one hopes that its new leadership understands this.
