Clarence Ceres is of the view that the high profile which Guyana once enjoyed in the field of furniture-making is being continually compromised by what he regards as the “crisis” in the wider forestry and wood products sector. If the once highly-vaunted craft of joinery is to be restored to its former pedestal, he says, there is need for urgent and wide-ranging state and private sector intervention.
Ceres told Stabroek Business that much of the decline in the wood products sector has to do with deficiencies in the management of the forestry sector, particularly, the seeming indifference to the need to create an enabling environment in which trades connected to value-added timber can prosper.
As is the case with other producers in the wood products industry with whom this newspaper has spoken, Ceres believes that the continued proliferation of log exports is doing more than crippling the value-added sector. It is, he says, killing off other industries and having a