Guyana is one of several Caribbean countries that will participate in the October 23-28, 2022 Trade Mission and Business Conference in Florida that will see the region ‘parade’ for US companies, opportunities to explore fourteen markets in the region with a view to helping them to make investment choices.
A September 6 Caribbean News Global report lists The Bahamas, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago as the Caribbean countries that will be seeking to catch the eye of prospective US investors.
The Global News Report says that the event will focus on what it describes as “region-specific sessions” that address themes that include market entry strategies, export compliance, legal logistics, disaster resilience, and recovery and trade financing resources. Attendees at the event will also benefit from one-on-one consultations with US and Foreign Commercial Services (US&FCS) commercial officers and/or US State Department Economic/Commercial officers with expertise in commercial markets across the region.
One is hard-pressed to recall a period in the recent past when member countries of the region and CARICOM, as a whole, have attracted such a sustained level of extra-regional attention. Much of that attention has derived from investor interest generated by huge oil finds in Guyana and Suriname and the investment potential deriving therefrom.
Guyana, particularly with the US oil giant ExxonMobil aggressively pursuing the recovery of the country’s considerable oil reserves, has served as a magnet to bring potential investors to the region. The circumstance has also caused the government here to begin to paint with a broader foreign policy brush which, these days, has been considerably extended to more adequately cover regions like Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Potential investors will also not be unmindful of the fact that the Caribbean represents a market of around 27 million people, making the region, collectively, the third largest export market for US-manufactured goods in Latin America, behind only Mexico and Brazil. Additionally, the region is “a natural commercial partner of the United States, knitted closely together by geography, history, and culture,” a Global News report says.
The strategic significance of fashioning trade and commercial relations not having been lost on Washington, the US’ Trade Americas administrative team brings together “the resources of the US Commercial Service in 14 countries and the State Department at US Embassies in 10 additional markets to help US exporters expand into new markets through timely market intelligence, trade events and matchmaking opportunities, and export counseling.”
