Banks DIH won the President’s Award for export achievement at the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association’s (GMSA) 15th Annual Presentation Awards Dinner at the Princess Hotel last night.
The conglomerate was among several companies such as Namilco and GT&T that were awarded for their contributions to the marketing and services sector. GMSA’s short to medium term objective is to substantially increase the manufacturing/services sectors’ contribution to Gross Domestic Product and has been engaged in a wide range of activities in order to encourage growth, the Association’s President, Clinton Williams said even as he noted that the manufacturing sector has shown flat growth in the first half of this year while the services sector had recorded growth of 2.7%.
He pointed out that there are several issues affecting the development and growth of the manufacturing and services sector including the high cost and frequent unavailability of electricity and the effective enforcement of existing copyright, anti-smuggling and tax evasion laws. He called for investment in remote-sensing technology to improve the monitoring of national borders and smuggling routes “to reduce the hemorrhaging of profit by local manufacturers caused by unfair competition”.
