Anyone who is even reasonably familiar with the local agro-processing community would agree that it comprises, for the most part, a hardy breed of Guyanese from all walks of life and ethnicities who have combined ingenuity and a sense of enterprise and who have ‘worked wonders’ transforming a bewildering array of fruits and vegetables into high quality condiments that have attracted market attention and patronage here in Guyana, the Caribbean, and outside the region.
The failure of the agro-processing sector to bring the country even greater revenues and accolades is a function of a number of factors, not least the decidedly half-hearted patronage of succeeding political administrations. Setting aside the fact that government has failed to create the conditions in which the agro-processing sector can grow and prosper, even when, in going it alone and without the benefit of a supporting infrastructure, the sector has turned out products that would ‘shine’ on the global market, state support for corresponding initiatives to help to position those products on the global market has been lacking. Truth be told, what little government has given to agro-processors here in Guyana, over the years has come, overwhelmingly, in the form of lip service and (as this newspaper has insisted hitherto) the ‘celebrated’ creation of the Small Business Bureau more than a decade ago has failed to ‘deliver’ anywhere near the extent of the undertakings given from time to time by the powers that be.
If anything, constraints, many of which are a function of the slovenliness of the state, have helped to strangle the sector. After more than a decade of dithering we have been unable to secure either the technology or the packaging, labelling, and product-presentation accoutrements to cause our agro-produce to secure anywhere near universal market acceptance. Compare our own circumstances with CARICOM partner Jamaica, a country which, not nearly as blessed as Guyana is with the potential to produce a Blue Ribbon agro-processing sector, but which has actually done so with ‘flying colours’, whilst we in Guyana are still dithering over where to find internationally acceptable bottling for mango jam.
The Florida International Trade and Cultural Expo (FITCE) is widely known to be, perhaps, the best one-off opportunity for condiments and craft from the Caribbean and South America to access the US market. The strictures are rigid though we have seen local agro-processors of meagre means make sacrifices to get to the FITCE. Attendance at the event offers rare opportunities to make sizeable marketing deals and some of our agro processors have taken a decision to seek out markets at FITCE.
Getting there is costly and not having done a great deal for the agro-processing sector up to this time, the political administration, taking the ‘oil money’ into account, can surely make a meaningful investment in the form of a generous subsidy to a delegation of local agro-processors being at FITCE this year. It is, frankly, the least that government can do for a sector which, up until now, has had nothing but the crumbs from our petro coffers. And that, surely, is not too much to ask of a sector which, up until now, has shone largely on account of its own efforts.
It is high time that the system, after all of its empty promises so far, makes a gesture that places it on the road to securing a more generous measure of credibility with the country’s agro-processing community.
