The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has been uncharacteristically busy over the past few weeks engaging, first, the banking sector and, subsequently, the Customs and Trade Administration (CTA), both of which play critical roles in the life of the urban business community. Both engagements are critical. In the case of the engagement with the commercial banks what the GCCI seeks to do is to create a more enabling environment through which businesses can access and use the various electronic banking services that are available. In the case of its engagement with the CTA the GCCI is seeking to change some of the more counterproductive aspects of the relations between Customs and the business community including the offering and acceptance of bribes.
In addition to its engagements with the commercial banks and the CTA the GCCI has also signaled its intention to promulgate a Code of Conduct for its members that will addresses issues like tax dodging, and drug running. These are certainly not issues which have been associated with the GCCI in previous years.
Over time, the Chamber had come to be associated – more-or-less – with low key initiatives and drab and poorly attended mid-day meetings. Indeed, the Chamber’s Executive Director has openly admitted that only around 35 per cent of its 100 or so members show any real interest in the organization, a truism borne out in the familiar pattern of poor attendance at Chamber functions – save and except its Annual Dinners.
When – as we have – you speak with members of the Georgetown business community about membership of the Chamber they sometimes “complain” that the organization does not have an agenda that coincides with the interests of most of its members. The response of the Executive Director has been to admit that the assertion is true but also to make the point that the Chamber is simply the vehicle through which the interests of the members can be effectively represented but that it is the members themselves who must make effective use of that vehicle.
The role of the Chamber is to represent the interests of its members and those interests which include the prevailing 16 per cent VAT rate, corporate taxes and bottlenecks in the country’s investment regime, issues that very often place them at odds with government. As one businessman told us the fact that there has been “quite a few public rows between the President and some prominent businessmen” on matters that have a bearing on business issues including taxation has made the business community particularly cautious about taking positions which they feel “the powers that be” might frown upon. In essence what the businessman was saying was that the relationship between the government and their business community can sometimes be informed by a sense of apprehension on the part of businesses that it was decidedly unwise not to find oneself on the same side with government on certain issues.
What the new President Chandradat Chintamani says the Chamber wants is an organization that is prepared to set and execute an agenda that seeks to respond to some of the more difficult challenges confronting its members including, for example, the administration of Customs clearance for goods entering Georgetown, the issue of smuggling of uncustomed goods into Guyana and the creation of a more small business-friendly credit regime.
The Chamber, of course, is beginning from the position of a weak institutional structure and a questionable capacity to institute all of the various measures outlined in its strategic plan; and while it says that it will be seeking volunteer help to boost the capacity of its Secretariat one wonders whether it can rely on volunteer help – mostly from University of Guyana undergraduates – to secure the quality of support that it seeks.
Over time, the Chamber has been more than a little indifferent to the importance of strengthening ties with sister Chambers in the rest of the Caribbean and elsewhere. It appears that the GCCI is now becoming more aware of the need to complete various unsigned Memo-randa of Understanding with other Chambers through which it might be able to secure various forms of technical assistance in giving effect to the pursuits outlined in its Strategic Plan.
It will take much more than an aggressive strategic plan to turn the Chamber around but the fact that its leadership appears prepared to do much more than talk is a healthy sign. What is also encouraging is that the new leadership of the Chamber appears prepared to tackle thorny issues – like the administration of the CTA – head on. That too, in an environment where doing the right thing can sometimes mean stepping on sensitive corns, is laudable.
The Chamber has also been quick to state that it seeks a cordial relationship with government and when such statements are made they are often intended to placate those among the powers that be who may frown on a genuinely independent GCCI. While a healthy relationship between the state and the various private sector organizations is good for business there has certainly been far too much evidence of “bad blood” between the two sides which has been characterized by evidence of bullying on one side and cowering on the other.
If the GCCI is to make any headway with its strategic plan it must, above all else, assume a far more assertive posture than has been in evidence among private sector organizations in Guyana. After all, the private sector is still the engine of growth – is it not?