Caribbean Airlines has offered a year-long 15% cargo discount to local exporters as a gesture of a commitment to a better business relationship with them.
Airline Airport Manager with responsibility for South America Carl Stuart made the announcement on Wednesday, during a meeting with exporters to iron out difficulties they have been experiencing in the transit of their goods to the US and other countries, in a safe and timely manner. Stuart also noted that the company wants to revisit a plan, mooted seven years ago, to have larger aircraft here to uplift cargo in a timely manner.
The meeting, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported, was hosted at the Ministry of Agriculture boardroom and saw the participation of several stakeholders from the New Guyana Marketing Corporation, the Guyana Trade and Investment Support Project, the Guyana Non-Traditional Exporters Association, the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) as well as exporters and airline representatives.
Air cargo over the past few years has declined and sea transport has increased by 20% and GINA said this was due “in no small part” to what some exporters perceive as the unfair disadvantage at which they are operating, including cost and time factors affecting the export of their produce by air.
Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud told the airline delegation that government had sought to further cooperation with them on a previous occasion by establishing a direct cargo service into New York, where the bulk of the market is, but that never materialised. He added that the offer was still on the table as the demand for local produce in the Diaspora is still there.
Persaud noted that the delay in time, handling of their produce and space are among the problems that exporters have experienced with air cargo transport. “Guyanese exporters felt that they were being treated as second class to exporters from say, Trinidad and Tobago, and that they were given limited cargo space in terms of getting their goods to the market…and then it comes back generally to consistent service,” Persaud was quoted as saying by GINA. He added that once producers are able to engage markets, then reliability becomes an important aspect. “I want Caribbean Airlines and others who are involved in this particular business to see Guyana as a growing market, a market to be taken seriously but also a market in which we demand fair treatment and we demand respect and we want to ensure that your customers, who are our exporters, are also given as much support as they need,” he stated.
In this year’s budget, the allocation for the agricultural diversification programme, which is primarily geared towards agriculture export, has been increased to $1.5B to sustain the initiative to enhance the country’s export market, GINA reported.
Stuart noted that Wednesday’s meeting was aimed at garnering information from exporters to come up with a road map for the airline, so that over the next 60 days to a year it can increase frequency into Guyana, in off-schedule times and in peak times, allowing it to be able to ship out all perishables to be exported to the Caribbean and other destinations. The airline’s Cargo Sales Executive Ken Joseph assured that the company is committed to enhancing cooperation with exporters. “We are thinking about doing a new venture into Guyana. We want to increase our cargo capacity, we want to increase volumes of what we are moving out of Guyana into Port of Spain, into Barbados, into Antigua, into Kingston, into Canada and New York and that volume is going to come from you guys and all the meeting is about is to get your support for that venture,” GINA reported him as saying.
Other exporter concerns were related to the handling of perishable produce, packaging, long delays between security checks and the long in-transit time. Addressing some of the concerns raised by exporters, Stuart pointed out that the airline company is ready to work with them and relevant stakeholders to find solutions where possible. Persaud pointed out that the solution to many of the issues exporters are experiencing lies in having an export facility at the CJIA. He added that some preliminary work has already been done in identifying a location for such a facility, GINA added.
Meanwhile, Persaud noted that security is also a concern and it has seen the ministry implementing a system of direct information sharing with CANU to dissuade persons from using agricultural produce to export narcotics. “We want the trade to be viable, [and] we also want it to be healthy and to be free of any of those irritants,” he added.
