A great deal is said and written these days about the importance of raising the bar as far as adding value to goods produced locally is concerned in order to make these more competitive on the external market. By external one means both regional and extra-regional, even though the real promise for the significant growth of markets for Guyana’s agricultural and manufactured products lies primarily in North America.
In fact, we need to remind ourselves of the ceaseless political refrain about small businesses being the real engine of growth in the Guyana economy. That having turned out – at least up to this time – not to have been the case, we now find ourselves, increasingly, looking to gold. In that context the situation in the gold industry at this time is far from reassuring.
Apart from the fact that Guyanese in the diaspora appear to favour home tastes. It would appear that Guyanese and Caribbean eating houses in North America and parts of Europe have actually managed to popularise many of our local foods in the communities where they exist. We learnt recently, for example, that casareep is growing ever more popular