Business Editorial

It is probably unlikely that another country in the Caribbean can be found that surpasses Guyana in terms of the proclivity on the part of its political administrations to embrace a governance process that appears to favour the making of empty promises.

The region is ‘on about’ its food security circumstances again. It appears as though the Barbados Agriculture Minister Indar Weir is sufficiently concerned about his country’s extant food security circumstances as to cause him to call (or at least this is how it seems) for the hastening of the creation of a regional Food Security Terminal, an initiative that emerged earlier and appeared to have had the support, principally, of the Heads of Government of Guyana and Barbados.

An enduring proclivity on the part of successive political administrations in Guyana has been to rattle off strings of high-sounding and politically appealing undertakings designed to bring about an instant ‘feel good’ sensation amongst the electorate, only to have those commitments fall by the wayside, often without even an official explanation.

One of the stories in this issue of the Stabroek Business seeks to draw attention to the October 23-28 2022 Trade Americas, Caribbean Region Trade Mission and Business Conference the purpose of which, as we understand it, seeks to afford potential American investors opportunities to peruse the region for investment openings including, in what one hopes, might be instances of joint venture undertakings that benefit our own businesses as well as job creation.

This is about as good a time as any to mount a vigorous lobby for the allocation of a more generous share of state resources to the growth of those mostly micro and small businesses in the agro-processing and craft sectors, among others, which have not, over the years, had delivered to them the various promises made by government including, at one time or another, promises of facilities that would enable them to transfer their manufacturing operations to premises that would render those operations more efficient.

If there is an expectation among the people of the Caribbean that having recently made limited progress in raising awareness of the importance of strengthening regional food security, their governments and various institutions will automatically take the next step of providing clear and reassuring evidence of their collective intention to carry through with this undertaking, they are best advised not to take that as a given.

The Florida-based Guyanese/American Chamber of Commerce (GACC) is owed a considerable debt of gratitude for agreeing to stage an event at the Critchlow Labour College on Monday September 26, the aim of which is to better prepare local small businesses in the agro processing, craft and other sectors to access markets in the United States.

It appears that the disappointing response which the government has given to a request from the Florida-based Guyanese-American Chamber of Commerce (GACC) that a subsidy be made available in order to afford participation of a Guyanese contingent in next month’s Florida International Trade & Cultural Expo (FITCE) has triggered a response from the GACC.

Those of us who might have felt that the unmistakable indications of a qualitative improvement in bilateral relations between Guyana and Suriname had materialized in the exchange of official visits to each other’s capitals by Presidents Ali and Santokhi, the widely publicized  collaborative work by technical teams on both sides preparatory to envisaged deeper bilateral cooperation in the oil and gas sector and the business to business exchange visits that have occurred between the two countries over several months may well be beginning to wonder whether the whole thing was no more than a mirage.

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.

A recent robust article emanating from the state-run Department of Public Information (DPI) titled ‘CARICOM’s food security agenda moving apace, says President Ali’, made no secret of the fact that its fundamental intention was to cast President Irfaan Ali in a leadership role insofar as the region’s undertaking to realise the reduction of regional food imports by 25% by 2025 is concerned.

The feedback that the Stabroek Business has received from local (mostly micro and small) businesses that have previously participated in the Florida International Trade and Cultural EXPO (FITC) is that it offers a more than useful avenue through which to secure access to what can be, potentially, a fortune-changing market.

Against the backdrop of two recent, widely publicized and well-supported events in Guyana and Barbados, respectively, which drew attention to both the food security potential of the region and what, up until now, has been a gap between aspiration and realization in that regard, it would have occurred to   observers that what we were witnessing was the familiar hype and hoopla reflected in the pleasing turnouts to view the product displays and the restating of previous official food security-related undertakings by high officials including Heads of Government.

Three recent events, the April 30-May 1 UncappeD event at the National Stadium, Providence, the May 19-21 Agri Investment Forum at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre and the May 26-29 Barbados Agro Fest, collectively, did much to focus national and regional attention on the agro-processing sector.

What we are already beginning to discover is that for all the global concerns arising out of what we are told is the nexus between fossil fuels and the worrisome threat of cataclysmic climate change, Guyana’s remarkably rapid transformation from a ‘banana republic’ to one of the most-watched countries in the hemispheric is entirely a function of our new-found oil and gas resources.

The Stabroek Business has had some decidedly encouraging feedback from two recent events held here in the region, the first being the high profile 25 x 2025 product promotion and consultative event held in Guyana primarily to allow for a collaborative look at how to respond to the challenge of a preponderance of foods from outside the Caribbean that are imported into the region.

One can hardly have a serious quarrel with Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha’s reported assertion that a “single shared vision” is what is needed to protect the region’s agriculture and its food systems, which, in a sense, rails against the failures of the past, and presumably, issues a call for a more robust collective effort this time around.

There is nothing wrong with the fact that a deliberate effort appears to have been made to create a kind of ‘feel good’ atmosphere across the three days during which attendees, particularly Caribbean Heads, gathered here for last week’s ‘25 x 2025’ forum.

Our conversation earlier this week with some of the women who had participated in the display and marketing of goods and services at the recent UncappeD event at the Providence Stadium drove home, perhaps in a manner that had not occurred to us previously, the seriousness of what, for the most part, is a substantive gender lobby for the creation of an environment that is far more convivial to allowing modest, women led businesses to grow and to prosper.

It would have been more than a little reassuring if the recent remark attributed to Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha regarding what he sees as the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) readiness for investments in the agriculture sector could have been accepted as a given.