By Joycelyn Williams
Joycelyn Williams is a Lecturer at the University of Guyana and a Programme Management Consultant
Industrial policy has been used by all the high performing Asian countries and the BRICS to deliberately push forward structural transformation and industrial development. Industrial policy refers to “planned and coherent use of government tax, subsidies, procurement and capital instruments to encourage investment or disinvestment” in sectors to create the urgency of industrial growth. There is no more debate among development agencies and practitioners on the need for all developing countries to have a well thought out industrial policy. Even agencies such as the World Bank have come to this conclusion. Guyana does have an industrial policy, and it needs to be given additional momentum and the similar level of agility and haste as the housing policy. These two, rolled out together, can do wonders for our economy.
Our piece today is on factory space. Many manufacturers are already enjoying subsidised and concessional factory space, viz land and facilities in state- sponsored industrial estates mainly at Eccles and Coldingen. Persons in key stakeholder ministries and the private sector have expressed the view that we need to monitor the use of the estates to a greater extent. For example, it has been noted that of the industrial spaces at Coldingen, less than 50% are fully occupied and many of the entities are at less than 60% capacity. If this is true, then we need to reexamine use of the estate.
It has been noted that leases granted to investors have stipulated conditions for the usage of the industrial estates and that a code of formal regulations governing the usage of the industrial estates needs to be developed and kept for enforcement. The intention of the regulations will be to clearly outline the technical standards for occupancy in a predictable manner devoid of discretion, and that would specify conditions in relation to zoning of activities, usage of the plot, environmental standards, labour relations, etc. This would also prevent businesses from shifting from one activity to another without permission. In general we need to quickly ensure that the industrial estate management committee conducts a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of how the estates are serving the growth of manufacturing and industry.
Based on the extensive work this writer has done with the private sector over the last 10 years and recently, it is known that there are many ‘bottom house’ agro-processors who urgently need to be clustered in a space that would enable them to learn best practices from one another and receive required technical assistance and services from government. It is possible that the similar agility and efficiency of the housing drive can be translated to providing factory space. A partnership between private developers and government can enable the process of quickly creating new factory shells for sub-let by government at rates just to cover cost to small and medium factories, possibly starting with agro-processors – the group with the greatest number of producers in unsatisfactory bottom houses. Both Jamaica and India have benefited from variants of this model.
Some of the agro-processors of whom we speak already have lucrative contracts with overseas markets and would be able to multiply their export sales should they have more modern and world-class facilities to which they can take potential sales interests to view their operations.
This writer has the confidence that as a country we have the capacity to deliver a growing manufacturing sector based on the successes seen in sectors such as housing.
