The Guyana Manufactur-ing and Services Association (GMSA) said it has left behind a year in which its own profile as much as the interests of its members was served by its focus on business support initiatives.
The association’s evaluation of its 2011 performance points to initiatives designed to enhance several sectors that fall under its mandate including agro-processing, forestry, and wood-processing, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, construction, engineering and minerals. It said that a number of externally-funded projects in some of these sectors got underway last year and during 2012 it will be seeking to play a monitoring role in the unfolding of those projects.
At the top of the agenda is an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-funded Energy Efficiency Survey (EES) which includes a significant energy conservation element and which the GMSA said it hoped would evolve into a national business model for cost saving.
The survey will be undertaken using a pilot group of local companies, which have already been identified, and is designed to identify inefficiencies in each company’s power supply applications and consumption patterns and ultimately to recommend the best cost saving technologies and methodologies. It is expected to get underway on January 17.
According to Project Co-ordinator, GMSA Executive Board member Clement Duncan, the findings from the baseline survey will be extrapolated into a blueprint for a business model that is expected to be adapted by other local companies.
Technical expertise for the project is being provided by the local firm Dynamic Engineering Company Ltd (DECL) and a number of regional energy consul-tants. DECL has been involved in energy management and conservation in Guyana and overseas for approximately 22 years.
The GMSA said that much of last year was spent breaking new ground in its linkages with private sector representative organizations in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) countries, all categorized as the emerging global economic giants. Linkages with the private sector in the USA and Canada have also been strengthened.
Funding provided by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has also allowed the GMSA to provide export market promotion for local micro and small business owners targeting markets in Canada. This year, the GMSA said, the Canadian Executive Services Organization (CESO) is expected to continue diagnostic studies in the construction and engineering and services subsectors while consultants have already provided study reports that have been adapted into work programmes for the forestry sector.
Meanwhile, in anticipation of likely emerging business opportunities from Brazil’s preparation to host two major international events – the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics 2016 – the GMSA last year inked a five-year economic integration project agreement with the Brazilian small business development support and service organization, SEBRAE, aimed at strengthening local production and export sales in various goods and services including aquaculture, agriculture and agro-processing, maritime transportation and transport logistics, craft production, cultural tourism and Education. The project is being executed in collaboration with the Linden, Rupununi and Georgetown Chambers of Commerce and the Private Sector Commission.
The GMSA said the role which it played in the September 2011 Caribbean/China Economic and Trade Forum had evolved into growing collaboration with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT). According to the GMSA, the process of twinning Guyanese entrepreneurs with Chinese counterparts which began with the Economic Forum, will continue into 2012. The association says that local entrepreneurs now possess the added incentive of access to funds from a billion dollar package provided by the Chinese government and which is being administered by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).
The GMSA, meanwhile, has begun talks with India through its High Commission in Georgetown which it hopes will lead to collaboration in the fields of information technology and science, construction and engineering.
