Last weekend’s persistent bad weather almost ruined Bartica’s first ever product and service expo, though a lucky break in the weather on Saturday caused the local Chamber of Commerce to succeed in making its point about the significance of the event and more particularly, of Bartica.
This was no GuyExpo by any stretch of the imagination. Bartica’s claim to an economic credential revolves around its geographic position as the gateway to the country’s gold-rich interior and if anything its 20-odd hotels and guest houses and its host of diners and other services associated with the transiting of people and goods lays barer its role as a key outpost for miners heading in and out of the interior.
Some Barticians have invested in the gold industry as have a number of non Barticians who have made the community home; so there is evidence that some of the gold wealth has remained behind.
These days there is evidence of a measure of affluence in Bartica, reflected particularly in a surfeit of attractive homes and flashy cars in which hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested. There is, however, no stand-alone Bartica economy to speak of. That presumably will come in time given some indications that the township’s earnings from gold are being diversified into more sustainable enterprises.
On Saturday evening, after the soggy conditions had compelled the abandonment of both the previous evening’s proceedings and the formal part of the proceedings, there was a modest display of about 30 booths drawn from businesses that had come from Georgetown. Regional Chairman Gordon Bradford had warned in an interview the previous day that as far as the Expo was concerned much could not be expected from a commercial sector that is still largely underdeveloped.
Apart from the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI), which less than five weeks ago joined Scotia and Citizens banks in Bartica, other major Georgetown-based businesses put in an appearance at Bartica over the weekend. GBTI Chief Executive Officer John Tracey told Stabroek usiness that while the bank was aware of the fall in gold price, it was seeking, through its presence in Bartica, to impact on diversification into alternative areas of business, possibly tourism among others. He said that having sought for years to buy property in an area of Guyana where land prices were the highest in the country, the bank had just recently decided to rent premises rather than purchase property of its own.
National Milling Company Consultant Affeeze Khan told Stabroek Business that the company was using the Expo event to introduce the full range of its products in Bartica.
The Kingston-based company Farfan and Mendes has also established a modest operation in Bartica.
Digicel, Demerara Distillers Ltd and the Bartica-based entertainment enterprise AJs were also present at the Expo.
At the local (Bartica) level a lone eating house, T&D Diner was offering cooked food whilst other vendors were hawking the customary fairground-type offerings. It is the emergence of several enterprising Barticians with the potential to become small business owners that took the Small Business Bureau to Bartica, its Chief Executive Officer Derrick Cummings told Stabroek Business.
Bradford, meanwhile, told Stabroek Business that the decision by the Bartica Chamber to invite high-profile business enterprises to participate in its first ever Expo was to seek to encourage local business owners and potential business owners to register with the Chamber.
Gold prices
