-calls for ‘real development bank’ in Guyana
Guyana’s open border policies that facilitate the uncontrolled importation of manufactured goods may have contributed to “a consistent decline” in the country’s Guyana’s manufacturing sector according to President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), Ramesh Dookhoo.
Addressing the Association’s Fourteenth Annual Dinner and Awards Ceremony on Thursday December 4th, Dookhoo said that what appeared to be “a desire to import any and everything to Guyana regardless of quality and standards” may be an indication that “efforts to correct the wrongs of the past” may have led to Guyana taking the concept of open trading “too literally.”
Controversy over what some local manufacturers have said has been a proliferation of imported goods into Guyana and the impact of this on the local manufacturing sector have surfaced continually in recent years with local producers in the garment and handicraft manufacturing sectors bemoaning particularly the recent significant increase in the number of Chinese-run businesses offering garments and items of craft manufactured in China. In the wake of concerns expressed recently over this trend by small business enterprises at this year’s GuyExpo, Industry and Commerce Minister Manniram Prashad told Stabroek Business that he believed that a liberal importation regime was good for competition and that it could help raise standards in the manufacturing sector.
However, according to Dookhoo, while local manufacturers should have no fear of competition there was a need to be mindful of the levelness of the playing field. “If we are to engage with the single market, for example, we need to clear the red tape at the national level so that all Caribbean countries can enjoy the markets of the Caribbean. We also need to take our standards bureau and our health department to the ports so that importation is not just a matter of collecting tariffs but a matter of standards and health and consumer protection.”
Critics of the current regime for the importation of goods into Guyana through legitimate ports of entry have latched on to what they say is an approach that focuses almost entirely on the collection of taxes and duties while paying little attention to quality and health issues. Both the Guyana National Bureau Standards (GNBS) and the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department are widely believed to be under-equipped to effectively perform their respective monitoring functions against the backdrop of an increasing volume of goods being imported into Guyana.
Dookhoo said that given the proper safeguards and support for the local manufacturing sector he believed that “our companies are capable of anything that we put our minds to…or geographic location, our time-tested ingenuity and our natural resources are just waiting to be turned into value-added products that will make Guyana an investment destination of choice,” Dookhoo said. The GMSA President said that he believed that the lowering of energy costs for the sector that will result from the completion of the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project “can revive the manufacturing sector to previous growth levels, giving us the competitive advantage that we require badly at this time.”
Meanwhile, according to Dookhoo there is an urgent need for “a new kind of banking institution in Guyana if the manufacturing sector is to develop to its fullest potential. In calling for “the re-introduction of a real development bank in Guyana the GMSA President said that the local banking sector needs to be geared to provide long-term financing for new and expanding businesses; offer the sector long-term trade financing and other financial services; facilitate the further development and widening of the financial markets in Guyana and assist the manufacturing sector to identify and secure sources of long-term domestic and external financing to aid the growth of the sector.”
