(The second and final instalment)
One of the more attractive things about GuyExpo 2013 was the more than usual number of Amerindian vendors who had set up stalls displaying their strong drinks and wild-meat based dishes.
Wild meat may no longer be a novelty in Georgetown but from all appearances the Amerindians’ offerings appeared to have been well supported and it seemed that rather than the support being simply a matter of patronage the wild meat dishes, particularly, appeared to be popular with the visitors to GuyExpo, In passing it should be noted that the surfeit of Amerindian stalls at GuyExpo last year was followed by the opening earlier this year of what is believed to be the first coastal Amerindian restaurant. It may have been a modest beginning, but it was a historic event in its own right given the fact that not a great deal is known about the Amerindian culinary heritage beyond the fact that cassava bread and wild meat are indigenous to Amerindians.
As far as we are told an audit of last year’s GuyExpo is to be tabled in the National Assembly this year. We are unable to confirm this but suffice it to say that it would be a salutary thing. The fact is that it may well be the case that GuyExpo could be a self-sustaining event and the proceeds from the gates, stall rents and other accruals might go a far way towards growing the event.
Somehow, you get a feeling that the growth of local small and medium-sized businesses could revolve around GuyExpo; that the event might be a place to which many local vendors might come with reasonable expectations of a meaningful marketplace; that there might even be high expectations of at least a fair and reasonable market for local products. When account is taken of the employment-generating potential of GuyExpo it is even worth wondering whether it would not be worthwhile to ensure that more micro and small businesses benefit from participating in GuyExpo even if this has to happen at the expense of some of the extra regional participation, the particular benefits of which have never really been disclosed.
As far as regional participation is concerned it might be well worth the while to do more to turn GuyExpo into a large marketplace, a space where regional buyers and sellers of clothing and jewellery and craft and condiments meet and where, perhaps, small Guyanese operators might get much more out of intra-regional trade. In that context there is perhaps a great deal more that can be done to attract more small and medium sized businesses to come to Guyana with their products, to buy our products and to have us buy theirs. That would mean, of course, that our creative industries would have to become genuinely busy creating products in which Guyana could have a definite competitive advantage. Plantain chips won’t do for obvious reasons; as far as that particular commodity is concerned, the Trinidadians may well be outselling us in our own backyard. Nor is it necessarily about taste. It is about the fact that T&T is streets ahead of us as far as labelling, packaging and marketing are concerned. Frankly, you get the impression, sometimes, that our local producers fail entirely to make the connection between labelling, packaging and marketing. The Trinidadians, we must remind ourselves, are chastising us in our own backyards in spite of a garrulous but increasingly ineffective and, arguably, irrelevant Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association.
There have been other arguments for a makeover of GuyExpo. This is not one of them. What should change is what often appears to be the necessity to pay annual homage to government for inventing GuyExpo and for whoever might be the subject Minister whenever the event comes around. There is, almost certainly, a case to be made for cutting back on the ceremonial opening and the parading of the politicians for a more studied focus on how, on the whole, we can maximise the commercial, trade and business opportunities which GuyExpo can offer; and of course there is the matter of greater accountability.
