With over 400 exhibitors, 150 overseas buyers and investors registered and up to 100,000 visitors expected, the Tourism Ministry plans to use GuyExpo 2012 to continue to push local products while seeking to attract investment for low carbon development.
Under the theme ‘Strengthening the Traditional, Embracing the New,’ this year’s GuyExpo will run from September 27 to 30 at the Sophia Exhibition Centre, offering visitors a chance to experience true Guyanese culture as well as look at the future, according to acting Tourism Minister Irfaan Ali.
At a press briefing yesterday, Ali emphasised that the goal this year is to promote Guyana and Guyanese products as far as possible, while encouraging the promotion of modern products that may be relevant to the local market.
“We thought we can use GuyExpo to bring technologically advanced products… Our whole idea is to promote business in Guyana, promote investment opportunities in Guyana in the context of our Low Carbon Development Strategy. We are fully aware that our country is embarking on the low carbon pathway to economic growth and, as a result, all the packages that we will be preparing, all the investment packages that we are working on, are designed within the context of the Low Carbon Development Strategy,” Ali explained.
He said there are now more than 400 exhibitors on board, with a few booths still available. “That is because we’ve expanded the actual exhibition arena, we’ve added some new space to bring more structure to the expo to ensure that we capture the various sectors entirely,” he stated. There will also be several new exhibitors on board this year, such as the new Giftland mall and cinema, Global Technology and online shopping company Zoon.
He added that as part of preparations for the annual event, the government is marketing GuyExpo internationally, in an attempt to bring in as much buyers and investors as possible. “Based on the interest of registration, we anticipate that we’ll have more than a 150 overseas buyers and investors for GuyExpo coming from more than 10 countries: Brazil, Barbados, Canada, St Lucia, St Vincent, India, China, Suriname, Trinidad and the USA. These are some of the countries that we have interest coming from and we are hoping that this GuyExpo can really open up the investment opportunities to Guyana and to create more markets for our local producers,” Ali noted.
He added that one of the important markets that are being targeted is agri-processing. He pointed out that there is a high level delegation from the hotel association and one person coming from Barbados directly from the association who will be looking at buying local products.
Ali said a meeting will be held with the local suppliers and producers to discuss marketing strategies, since this has proven to be an issue in past years. “We will try to instil in them what we call marketing consciousness and marketing ethics and marketing morals and marketing responsibility, because we can do all of this and then we’ve had experiences where our local producers were signed in to contracts and then were unable to deliver on these contracts because of capacity constraints. We want them to understand the seriousness in creating these partnerships,” he emphasised.
Touching on the actual activities that will extend throughout the four-day period, Ali said that there will be several villages open to the public, including the Tourism Village where persons will get a taste of our local cuisine and local culture. There will also be Indian drumming, African drumming, steel pan and Amerindian celebrations. In addition, an area will be specifically designated for youth empowerment and another for technology. New to GuyExpo will be an area dubbed ‘The Future City,’ which will look at projects and future milestones for the country.
Ali said that much focus will be placed on the fashion industry as well, since it has been realised that it is a growing field and has earned the interest of the public. Visitors will also be treated to entertainment and to monitor this, the minister said that a system has been arranged for noise regulation, so as to not affect many booths. It was also revealed that Banks DIH, one of the sponsors, has committed to fund an international artist to perform at the event on Saturday evening, to coincide with Arthur Guinness Day. Among the other sponsors are Ansa McAl, GT&T and Digicel.
This year tickets for GuyExpo will be pre-sold at the Sophia Exhibition Centre, the Ministry of Tourism office and the Guyana Tourism Authority.
