Since the formal opening of the Takutu Bridge in September 2009 by President Bharrat Jagdeo and then Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva, there has been a significant intensification of public discourse regarding the prospects of stronger trade and economic ties between Guyana and Brazil.
In previous years, the issue of strengthening economic links with Brazil had been limited to political pronouncements that simply took no account of what it would require to make those links a reality and, on occasion, the signing of bilateral protocols and MOUs, which, thereafter, bore little if any fruit. The commissioning of the Takutu Bridge was to provide us with an altogether different perspective regarding the prospects that lie in the sheer size of the market for goods and services that could become available to Guyana in northern Brazil alone.
Initiatives to establish a kind of commercial ‘beach head’ at Lethem coupled with developments like the visits to this country by the Brazilian small business promotion entity Sebrae have served to illuminate those prospects.
The circumstance represents a sobering reminder of the geo-strategic advantage Guyana enjoys as a member of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) on the one hand and a bona fide South American country, on the other. Arguably, the most significant opportunity to be derived from this advantage reposes in the prospects of benefiting from market access in both the Caribbean and South America and in this particular case, in northern Brazil. It is, to say the least, a huge opportunity.
And if it remains true that formal trade and economic ties with Brazil have been relatively minimal and little advantage has been taken of bilateral agreements entered into by the two countries in the past, the bridging of the Takutu River and the prospects for a paved highway between the two countries have unquestionably created an opportunity for us to put all that behind us.
All this, of course, has been said before. Our analysis of the prospects for enhanced Guyana/Brazil trade and economic relations has also led us in other directions. We have wondered, for example, whether those prospects are matched by a corresponding sense of urgency on the part of the local business community and a commitment to simply making the effort; whether our local productive capacity can meet the requirements of what is in fact a huge market; whether the conditions, phytosanitary and otherwise, for exporting goods to Brazil can be fully met by local manufacturers and, perhaps, most importantly, whether the government is fully cognizant of the opportunity and is sufficiently supportive of private sector efforts to take advantage of it.
In some respects there is reason to believe that some things are happening. The recent engagements, for example, between local private sector officials and their opposite numbers in Boa Vista, are indicative of an ongoing interest on both sides in taking advantage of the potential that exists for stronger ties in trade and services. On the Guyana side, one is encouraged, for example, by the recent disclosure that three hotels are currently under construction at Lethem and that these are likely to be completed some time this year. What is good about this is that it signals, presumably, some measure of progress in discourses on tourism which was one of the issues that arose during the Boa Vista meeting. Of course, long before these most recent initiatives were undertaken, several local firms had put down their markers at Lethem – so to speak – while urban traders had commenced modest initiatives to market goods bought in Georgetown to Brazilians across the border.
In the months following the formal opening of the Takutu Bridge, we in Guyana, the government, the private sector and Guyanese as a whole had become understandably energized over what we rightly perceived to be a new and significant opportunity for market access to our giant neighbour in terms of both locally produced goods and services such as tourism. The prospects repose not only in enhanced opportunities for local firms to attract investment in both their physical size and productive capacity, thereby creating more jobs, among other things, but also in opening up and developing the long-untapped potential of parts of the interior and creating new and badly-needed economic opportunities for communities like Linden.
Since that time – and while one is by no means suggesting that no progress has been made in the march towards strengthening economic ties with Brazil – there has been a sense of a dwindling of the initial excitement over those prospects. One senses too that the sense of national excitement over those prospects may well have led – particularly among the uninitiated, to an underestimating of the amount of work that Guyana would have to do if it is to take advantage of those opportunities. The recent remark made to this newspaper by President of the Guyana Manufacturers and Services Association (GMSA) Clinton Williams about the need for local firms in the construction sector to better position themselves to take advantage of external markets applies as much to the Brazil situation as it does to the particular context in which he was speaking. Mr Williams also commented briefly on the challenges which the private sector must confront and deal with in the matter of meeting the phytosanitary and other conditionalities associated with establishing significant trading links with Brazil.
We cannot expect that every single initiative undertaken in the process of moving closer to stronger trade and economic relations with Brazil will become the subject of a media release, but one senses that there has been a distinct lull in the process of keeping us abreast of the pace and progress of developments in a general sense. Of course, this may appear to be the case only because, after the initial excitement initiated in the wake of the commissioning of the Takutu Bridge, there was bound to be a quieter period of consolidation during which government and the private sector would proceed with the nuts and bolts of making what, which for years was a dream, a reality. That having been said, the sheer significance for Guyana of the promised enhanced relationship between Guyana and Brazil in terms of enhancing trade and economic ties, dictates that significant attention and energies be expended by both the government and the private sector in a mutually re-enforcing effort to ensure both the pace and the effectiveness of the plans that must be made and initiatives taken for the strengthening of those ties. For more reasons than one we simply cannot afford to pass up the opportunities which the circumstances afford for further cementing relations with our giant neighbour.
