In response to a news item in Stabroek News, the General Manager of the New GMC, Teshawna Lall in a letter of November 8th defended her agency’s performance. Among other things, she said that at the end of 2022, total exports of non-traditional agricultural commodities (fresh and processed) increased by 7.3 percent from its 2019 level of 9,129.1 MT. Of this, regional exports rose by 29 percent while extra-regional exports grew by 4.5 percent.
In relation to Barbados, exports totalled 700,947 kgs at the end of 2022, surpassing pre-pandemic levels (2019) by 62.9 percent.
From 2021 to the present, she said that the New Guyana Marketing Corporation provided 25,856 interested persons with market information, data, extension, and Agri-Business advice and successfully created a total of 870 new market linkages.
The Guyana Shop, she said, had an increase of 630 new products and 119 new agro processors for the past two years.
New GMC, she said, has been diligently collaborating with farmers and agro-processors, facilitating their participation in expos to showcase their products both locally, regionally and internationally.
She added that the New Guyana Marketing Corporation has trained over 3,378 farmers and agro processors from 2021 to July 2023 in various areas such as Cost of Production, Post-Harvest Management, Product Development, Packaging and Labeling, etc.
Be that as it may, serious questions linger. At a time when the accelerated production and marketing of both farm produce and agro-processed commodities is manifestly important to both the Guyana economy and to the wider food security aspirations of the region, as a whole, the New GMC can play a critical role in supporting the realization of those ambitions. It can do so, however, only if it is altogether detached from the apron strings of a Ministry of Agriculture whose bureaucratic outlook appears to cause it not to understand the substantive role of the New GMC.
In truth, the New GMC, from a Guyana perspective, ought to function in much the same way that the Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO), Jamaica’s highly successful products’ promotion entity, functions in our sister CARICOM country. If it is no secret that JAMPRO is a state agency of the country’s Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries (MICAF) there has never been any question that its role in “promoting business opportunities in export and investment to the local and international private sector” has earned it a level of autonomy that allows it to function at both the local and international levels free of the encumbrance on a government Ministry kitted out in all of its bureaucratic authority. Not so the New Guyana Marketing Corporation.
The entity continues to act as a substantive ‘Department’ of a Ministry of Agriculture, unable to undertake any serious substantive assignment without the Minister’s ‘say so.’ Unsurprisingly, searching questions have arisen as to whether the New GMC is equipped to perform the range of local and regional product-promotion functions which, presumably, are (at least on paper) part of its portfolio. Truth be told, the Corporation’s most prominent functions at these events all too frequently, appear to be limited to overseeing small business ‘Market Days’ and working with local agro-processors to help upgrade local packaging and labeling standards.
Recently, the New GMC undertook visits to the recently state-created regional agro-processing facilities on missions the purpose of which still remains unclear. Arising out of those visits, what we know, is that contrary to assurances provided by Minister Mustapha that the facilities were ready for use by the farmers, some of them remain decidedly incomplete. Ironically, at a time when the promotion of the Region’s food security bona fides ought to be one of the primary issues on the New GMC’s agenda, its work continues to be guided (constrained) by a Ministry of Agriculture whose information dissemination posture continues to suggest that its preference is for obfuscating issues and misunderstanding the role of the New GMC to a point where the role and functions of the institution grow increasingly fuzzy.
What needs to happen at this juncture is that the Minister and Ministry of Agriculture ought to be focused on what has become both the regional and global issue of food security. The New GMC needs to be reinvented and given a mandate (and the autonomy to effectively execute it) that is consistent with those realities. The Ministry of Agriculture is too marooned in its bureaucratic ‘glad rags’ to execute that mission.
