Whether President of the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) Clinton Williams would have made much headway during his presentation at last Friday’s Annual General Meeting in his quest to persuade his audience that the umbrella body had made meaningful strides in overseeing the development of the manufacturing sector under his watch is not something that can be determined from a distance. What is known, however, is that leaving aside a few well-known and determined stayers in the manufacturing the rest of the sector is in far less than stellar shape.
For several years there has been a plethora of protestation from local manufacturers on issues ranging from high energy costs to limited overseas market opportunities and last Friday there was little in Mr Williams’s presentation to suggest that we are in the throes of an imminent and defining difference in the fortunes of the manufacturing sector.
If fault for the continuing weakness of the manufacturing sector may not – at least for the most part – be justifiably laid at the door of the GMSA one gets the impression that its outgoing President has often tried far too hard to overstate the accomplishments of the Association. Perhaps its primary and most glaring failure has been, overall, the ineffectiveness of its lobby to persuade government to put in place some critical measures which, arguably, might change the fortunes of the sector.
As an aside, it is apposite to note that having been registered just two years shy of half a century ago the GMSA, today, boasts just 106 members. According to the outgoing President, more than half of that number are not “fully subscribed bona fide active members.” That cannot by any stretch of the imagination be proffered as a healthy position in circumstance where there has been numerous – though admittedly mostly modest manufacturing initiatives – undertaken primarily in the agro-processing sector in recent years. Here, it has to be said that many, perhaps even most of these ventures have been unable to grow beyond the micro business stage in view of well-known constraints that include lack of capital for product improvement, effective marketing and increased production costs.
Here again, if the GMSA cannot be blamed for the extant condition of small operators in the manufacturing sector it cannot be said to have pushed government anywhere near hard enough to trigger interventions that would have helped elevate the sector from its present state.
In his address, Mr Williams outlined a range activities undertaken by the GMSA, presumably aimed at enhancing the condition of the local manufacturing and services sectors. These include
the “formation of a Revised National Development Strategy for Manufacturing and Standards,” the strengthening of the Association’s relationship with Caribbean Export “on a number of fronts,” participation “in a recently conceived trade and investment market study among Guyana, Suriname and Brazil” and representation at assorted regional workshops. Interestingly, not a word was uttered about the specific ways in which the local manufacturing sector benefited directly from these activities. And while it good news that “export revenue from Cariforum countries overall in 2013 totaled US$51 billion to which the services sub-sector contributed 62 per cent, it would have been more than a little helpful if a measure of enlightenment could have been offered regarding Guyana’s contribution thereto. In sum, as an initiative designed to make a case for the GMSA it is not the opinion of this newspaper that the speech amounted to much.
If there is, for example, no reason to doubt that the GMSA continued its advocacy to address the dredging of the Demerara Navigational Channel to a depth that would accommodate much larger cargo ships, the reality is that we remain at the proverbial square one on remedying a critical impediment to the development of the shipping sector and by extension both import and export costs. What has the GMSA’S lobby changed in this instance?
Nor has any significant headway been made in what the GMSA’s outgoing President says has been a “long battle” by importers and distributors to staunch the flow of counterfeit imports. The unchecked flow of a range of imports—some of a decidedly inferior quality—again attests to the lack of effectiveness of the GMSA lobby to protect local manufacturers from unfair competition.
Oddly enough Mr Williams had nothing to say in his address on what has long been the ceaseless complaint from local manufacturers in some sectors about the unceasing proliferation of Chinese-made goods—some of which have proven to be decidedly sub-standard—and its impact on an already weak and under-resourced manufacturing sector.
As far as the GMSA’s “very effective collaboration” with CESO and the Trade Facilitation Office to help expand markets for local agro-processors and arts and craft producers is concerned, again, according to Mr Williams, that project “was only minimally successful” while little has since been heard of the Canadian Importers Buyers Mission “that saw five Canadian importers coming here to meet with growers and agro-processors and develop market linkages for their products.” It was during the visit of this group that concerns arose over the prevalence of concealment of illegal drugs in exports from Guyana a matter on which the GMSA has made no profound statement despite the fact that it is its own members that stand to lose directly from the practice.
Also absent from Mr Williams’s presentation was a much needed update on the progress that has been made up until now in preparing locally manufactured products to meet the requirements for importing foods into the United States under that country’s (2010) Food Safety Modernization Act. In circumstances where meeting the safety and health considerations required under the Act are beyond the current capabilities of either the public or private sector. Up until now the GMSA’s interventions have been futile and the full implementation of the provisions of the Act will pose a serious threat to US markets for locally manufactured food products.
If the contents of Mr Williams’ presentation are anything to go by, they point to a packed agenda of initiatives, collaboration with domestic and external organizations and encounters with state agencies, all of which, one assumes, were designed to take the local manufacturing sector forward. Whether, on the whole, these were able to accomplish the goal of a healthier manufacturing sector is the question that remained altogether unanswered in his presentation.
