A few days ago, the Executive Director of the Barbados Manufacturers Association (BMA) Bobbi McKay spoke with more than 250 Barbadians from the Diaspora who had returned to the island for a convention to support local manufacturers by acquiring their produce, using it and recommending those products to other friends and relatives residing abroad.
Barbados is a small island with a narrow manufacturing base though the BMA understands only too well that Bajans in the Diaspora take their country seriously and are usually responsive to appeals from at home to “Buy Bajan.”
The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is that, at least as far as we are aware, there is no direct line of communication between expatriate Guyanese and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) or any other private sector umbrella organisation for that matter, so that whatever opportunities might exist for utilising the Diaspora as a conduit for marketing locally-produced commodities abroad are lost because the connections that are necessary to facilitate that kind of marketing simply do not exist.
The second point that should be made is that Diaspora conventions are altogether unheard of in Guyana. There used to be a time, about twenty or thirty years ago, when there were several Guyanese Associations in Europe and North America. Some of them organised “excursions” back to Guyana while others held various events in their adopted countries to mark occasions like Mashramani and Independence. Even in those days, communication between the Diaspora and public and private sector entities at home was limited. What this meant, of course, was that Guyanese in the Diaspora visited, had fun and left. Neither the state agencies nor the private sector bodies saw them as a means through which goods and services originating in Guyana could be sold overseas.
Among the interesting points made to the Diaspora audience by Ms. McKay was the recommendation that rather than “ship home,” overseas-based Barbadians should “check with your Barbadian manufacturers first.”
Again, as far as we are aware, the GMSA does not customarily avail itself of opportunities to engage returning Guyanese nor is sufficient effort made to market our manufacturing – particularly our home furnishing sector – abroad to cause remigrating Guyanese to think twice about bringing imported furniture with them.
Guyana, like Barbados, possesses excellent opportunities to create niche markets in the Caribbean and Diaspora. On the other hand, our local umbrella private sector organizations never really appear inclined to demonstrate that level of interest in aggressively marketing the goods and services that we produce abroad.
The BMA in Barbados provides an example of what can be accomplished through the creation of a practical agenda that goes beyond the mundane chore of representing members’ grouses, which in our case remains the Revenue Authority bottlenecks, unbearably high import duties and corporate taxes. Perhaps the difference between us and Barbados is the generous helping of short-sightedness with which our umbrella organisations are afflicted.
