Adequate opportunities for the aggressive international marketing of Guyana’s agro-processing sector and the promotion of local agro-produce in major foreign markets are still to be created despite the wider efforts of government to promote the country abroad on the back of the emergence of the oil & gas industry, Guyanese award-winning entrepreneur, Sandra Craig, has told the Stabroek Business.
Speaking with this newspaper at the conclusion of a local product display held to coincide with last month’s international oil and gas conference hosted by the Government of Guyana, Craig said such efforts as have been made officially, over the years, to build the local agro-processing industry by strengthening those businesses that “have been trading for many years” have not been sufficient.
“I’m not saying that nothing has been done for agro-processors. I’m saying that far more can be done. We are still far from setting up an agro-processing industry here in Guyana that can compete seriously in the Caribbean, much less in the US, Canada, and elsewhere,” Craig told Stabroek Business.
Asked about the role that the Small Business Bureau has played in the advancement of the agro-processing sector since its launch in the businesswoman said that she did not believe that the Bureau was ever really fully equipped to give the agro-processing sector the “push” that it deserved. She asserted that “with the Small Business Bureau it was always a matter of too little resources to support the growth of so many small businesses across the country. “That is why some of the businesses that were supported by the Bureau did not make it. Some of them fell by the wayside,” Craig told the Stabroek Business.
Meanwhile, Craig noted that while opportunities were “opening up” for various types of local businesses in the current oil & gas environment, there was not a great deal of evidence that the agro-processing sector was attracting anywhere near sufficient official attention as part of the wider growth of the economy. She said that the official investment in factory facilities that lift many of the country’s agro-processors beyond them having to work in their kitchens is still to be realized. “We need support with packaging and labeling and there is not much of that available at this time,” Craig said.
The owner of SS Enterprise which manufactures locally flavoured barbecue sauces, said that at the pace that the local agro-processing sector is growing, where there is no technology, no factories and no marketing of products abroad, we cannot be expected to grow.
And the local agro-processor wants a thorough evaluation of the extent of the contribution made by the SBB to the growth of the small business sector. I’m not saying that it has not helped many of us but we really don’t know whether it has been successful. It’s time we knew.”
