Business Editorial

There is probably a case for suggesting that the current (understandable) preoccupation with the imminent commencement of oil exploitation offshore Guyana and what this could mean for the future economic shape of our country could serve as a distraction from other equally important issues that have a bearing on the economy of our country and the well-being of our people. 

Whilst the concept of the team is often an important tenet in the pursuit of successful leadership it is not uncommon for some leaders to succeed purely by virtue of the sheer weight of their own personalities and their own particular leadership qualities so that much of what emerges as policy within an organization may well be the result, by and large, of the thinking of one man or woman.

This newspaper’s various engagements with private sector business support organizations have afforded us a more enlightened perspective on their work and the purpose that they seek to serve.

In what would have come to many observers as something of a surprise the Ministry of Public Health, earlier this week, issued a media release seemingly pointing to a busy time ahead for the Ministry pertaining to what Minister Volda Lawrence strongly suggests has been a virus of fraud attempts to steal from the public treasury, occurring within her Ministry.

Relations between the public and private sectors in the economic sphere are generally considered – and justifiably so – to be essential to Guyana’s economic health, the reason being that while it is government that creates and provides the policy framework within which the private sector functions, it is the private sector by investing in economic initiatives that makes critical goods and services available, paying taxes and creating jobs that are, in fact, the engine of growth. 

The Stabroek Business has, in recent weeks, focused a considerable amount of editorial attention on the collaborative efforts involving government, the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) and the agro processing sector, through initiatives like the UncappeD events and the lobbying efforts taking place at the level of exchanges between GMSA and government officials.

Over a protracted period of time the relationship between the Government of Guyana and the private sector as represented by the major Business Support Organizations has proceeded in fits and starts and if the truth be told the failure to see eye to eye has not always been on account of differences that have had to do with business and the economy.

If the adage about one swallow not making a summer clearly applies to the recent initiatives by the Government of Guyana and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) to attempt to breathe new life into the country’s agro-processing sector, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the recent developments in the sector and what we should be reading into it.

There can be no question than that the high rate of urban unemployment and what is widely believed to be a consequential high rate in the commission of crimes, both petty and significant ones, that those institutions responsible for managing the affairs of the capital at the levels of both local and central government have a responsibility to do what lies within their authority and their resources to create meaningful and sufficient employment for residents of the capital.

The announcement last week that the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) had intercepted a boat containing cargo (foreign chicken and mosquito coils) seemingly intended for illegal placement on the local market, makes two points; first that the GRA, through its enforcement mechanisms, now appears more determined to thwart customs evasion by smugglers and to improve on the collection of such revenues as accrue to the state.

With high unemployment – particularly in the non-coastal areas of Guyana being one of the national challenges which we have been unable to sufficiently roll back, news of the planned commencement of operations of Guyana Manganese In.

Like a recurring decimal the ‘grow more food’ clarion call has, intermittently, resonated across the region as though repetition could transform the vocalizing of the wish into a self-fulfilling prophesy.

After the recent stories about the modest success that has been realized in our attempt to begin to substitute the country’s potato and onion imports with higher levels of local production we are now being told by the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (see story in this issue) that sufficient work has been done in terms of research into farming techniques and the varieties that are best suited to local conditions to give rise to the likelihood that locally cultivated  carrots, as well, a few years down the road, will save us further amounts of foreign exchange.

This newspaper’s most recent updates on the provisions contained in the Small Business Act for the allocation of twenty per cent of state contracts to local small businesses provided by Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin and Chief Executive Officer of the Small Business Bureau Dr.

In the space of a week, two of the country’s more Important Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) held their Annual General Meetings, the forum at which, among other things, opportunity is provided, through the presentations of the respective Presidents, to get a sense of where the business community is headed and perhaps more importantly in our circumstances to learn more from the standpoint of the respective umbrella organizations about the challenges confronting them in the course of their private sector advocacy effort.

What now appears to be an emerging trend towards a modest breakthrough for the local rice industry on the Cuban market is a sign, albeit a modest one, that some inroads are being made to attempt to compensate for what was once a considerable market in Venezuela.

This is one of those ‘seasons’ when our municipal market are at their brilliant best, bursting at the seams with fresh fruit and vegetables at prices that bring out throngs of shoppers and generate the kind of bulk buying that gives rise to long periods  of food storage.

One of the salutary features of the work of JAMPRO, Jamaica’s trade and investment arm, one of whose tasks is to globally check out and report on such external market and investment opportunities as might benefit Jamaican businesses is that its work has left a discernable mark on the country’s export sector.

One of the regrettable features of the unfolding discourse on Guyana’s oil find and its implications for the country’s future has been the shift in the focus of the public discourse from the portents of becoming an ‘oil economy’ for the development of the people and the enhancement of the welfare of the people to the issue of the division of the spoils between Guyana as the owners of the resource and the entity that undertook the investment and the risk associated with confirming the presence of oil and undertaking the recovery effort.

The reported brouhaha over the alleged two-month gap in the payment of salaries to security guards providing services at state locations in Region Five would appear to point to the persistence of an entrenched practice of employer exploitation of security guards by private contractors providing service at state institutions.