Krishnand Jaichand is currently serving his second term as President of the Upper Corentyne Chamber of Commerce. Owner of the Inner City Taxi Service and, more recently, the City Inn, both located at Line Path, he has a vested interest in the growth of the Upper Corentyne community.
There has been growth aplenty in the business community over the years, but Jaichand says there is also much that the business sector is concerned about. One of the current talking points is the decline of the sugar industry; a circumstance that has been accentuated by the recent official announcement that the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) had, just recently, recorded its lowest ever first crop. Jaichand appears unsurprised by the development. Given its proximity to the Skeldon factory, the Upper Corentyne business community has been able to closely monitor the meltdown in the industry.
Business in the Upper Corentyne – private cane-farming, distribution, cash-crop farming, logging, retail and private transportation – revolves around the sugar industry. Sugar remains a large employer of labour, but the community cannot ignore the fact that its economy can no longer depend on just sugar.
Jaichand’s current assessment, that “business is not as it best as spending power has been reduced,” is as much an understatement as it is a veiled reference to the continuing decline of sugar. He would only talk briefly about the new Skeldon Sugar Factory. He is of the view that the old Skeldon factory should have remained open until the new, multi-million dollar and ultimately controversial facility was “fully up and running.” The new factory’s failure to reach its production targets, he says, is not only “draining the economy,” it is also seriously affecting the livelihoods of Upper Corentyne residents who have long looked to the industry.
The advent of the new factory had triggered a move into private cane farming. Those investors are brooding. Problems associated with poor farm to factory roads have added to the capacity deficiency of the factory. Some of the farmers have quietly shifted to cash crops. Life beyond sugar is no longer a mere thought among residents here. People talk about the need to create a manufacturing sector. They do not believe that a community that simply turns to trading as an entrepreneurial option can sustain itself indefinitely.
Jaichand talks about what some Corentyne businessmen say are preferential rates of duty on goods imported from Suriname.
Apparently, those preferential rates benefit businessmen trading in Georgetown. He says the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) needs to re-examine this circumstance that is, in effect, a disincentive to commerce in the Upper Corentyne area.
He concedes that the image of business in the community has been shaped largely by the view that commerce thrives on contraband, but insists that the perception of wholesale smuggling is a myth. The practice may not have disappeared altogether, but he says the efforts of the authorities on both sides of the border have reduced smuggling significantly.
More than that, Jaichand says, the Upper Corentyne Chamber frowns on smuggling. He vouches for the 93 members of the Chamber, insisting that they operate “the legal way”. The “legal way”, he says, involves businessmen travelling to Suriname and returning with invoices which are then submitted to the GRA for processing procedures that includes the computation of duties. The duties are paid prior to the goods being imported.
Admission to the Upper Corentyne Chamber is preceded by a background check on the applicant. Delinquents in the matter of compliance with laws and regulations are not accepted as members.
Time constraints previously associated with the movement of goods from Georgetown to Region Six have been made easier by the creation of the Berbice River Bridge, though Jaichand says that crossing rates remain a sore point with some sections of the business community. The costs associated with transporting goods from Suriname to Guyana by ferry, on the other hand, have become sufficiently costly for the business to look to the realisation of the outcome of bilateral discussions between Guyana and Suriname about the possible legalisation of the ‘backtrack’ route. The chamber, Jaichand says, supports this option which, he says would enhance the profitability of small businesses.
Jaichand says that a scarcity of skills with which to support ambitions associated with the development of the community remains one of its sternest challenges. He says the chamber is currently engaging the Upper Corentyne Training Institute with a view to developing training programmes for operators of hymacs, bulldozers, tractors and other heavy-duty equipment. If the programme succeeds, graduates will significantly enhance their chances of being offered employment in the private sector.
Piracy, Jaichand says, continues to be the bane of fishermen’s existence. He advocates a bilateral – Guyana/Suriname – effort to curb piracy that matches in intensity the collaborative initiative that was taken to arrest smuggling.
The chamber is currently in its 43rd year and Jaichand says that its contribution to the growth of the business community has been significant. He points out that it has, over the years, helped to lobby for rural electrification, the creation of fire stations and the Guyana-Suriname ferry service. All of these are now realities.
Last year, the chamber in collaboration with USAID, initiated a number of training programmes, including some designed to meet the management challenges facing owners of small businesses. Those programmes which included training in the management of businesses in the hospitality sector had a special significance for the chamber president. He is currently seeking ways of marketing his own hotel.
Jaichand is keen about increasing the volume of visitor arrivals at Skeldon, but he worries about the existing garbage disposal regime which he says is far from mindful of environmental awareness. The local municipality, he says, appears unable to properly finance the reliable removal of refuse. It is, he says, a matter of inefficient enforcement of municipal laws governing the payment of rates and taxes. Jaichand says the institution of an environmental tax to support solid waste management may be the solution to the problem of financing though that would still leave the challenge of safe waste disposal to be dealt with. At the moment much of the community’s solid waste is deposited in an area adjacent to a playing field.
In the past year, the Upper Corentyne Chamber has been pursuing its own planned environmental campaign, immersing itself in local cleanup campaigns and donating 12 garbage bins to the Corriverton Town Council. Additionally, the chamber has erected a visitors’ waiting shed at the Skeldon Hospital and repainted road signs and pedestrians crossings in the community. Individually, they are small gestures. Cumulatively, they amount to much more.
The Upper Corentyne Chamber’s current ambitious initiative involves the creation of a job bank. It is in the process of accepting expressions of interest in particular jobs which information will then be made available to potential employers in the community. That way, Jaichand says, the search for some categories of labour can stop at the Chamber itself.
Later this year, in an effort to better market itself, the Chamber will be hosting its first Trade Exposition. Apart from providing the local business community with an opportunity to showcase its goods and services, the chamber will be using the opportunity to strengthen trading relations with Suriname.
