Since the disclosure in the Friday July 10 issue of this newspaper to the effect that there will be no GuyExpo this year, we have spoken with quite a few vendors who customarily offer items of food, clothing, ornaments and costume jewellery for sale at the event. Entirely unsurprisingly in our view, they are far from happy with the news. They are no less happy with the reason that has been given for the decision to set aside GuyExpo this year; that energies and resources are being channelled in the direction of the country’s 50th Independence Anniversary celebrations in 2016.
Some of the vendors contend, with some measure of validity in our view, that there need not be a nexus between GuyExpo 2015 and the country’s 50th Anniversary celebrations and that even if the issue is one of resources we might stage a much smaller GuyExpo this year, leaving much of the organization and execution to the private sector whilst excluding—at least for 2015—overseas participants, or at least, extra-regional participants from the event.
To make a case for GuyExpo is to make a case for the single most significant opportunity afforded local vendors to have access to what might be termed a significant local market and perhaps to a lesser extent to be able to explore such opportunities as might exist for interaction with regional producers who come here for the event. Indeed, the argument has long been made for the fashioning of an event that focuses much more on maximizing local and intra-regional markets and downplaying extra-regional participation.The point has been made too that over the years there has been far too much state bureaucratic involvement in the planning and execution of GuyExpo, that the event has always been used as a stage from which politicians blow their trumpet and that pulling off an event like GuyExpo is perhaps best left in the hands of the private sector.
One might argue that to place GuyExpo in the hands of the private sector might in effect amount to marginalizing small vendors in the various sub-sectors since, collectively, local small businesses have always lacked effective umbrella organization. Still, the moment is more than opportune to challenge local small business to organize themselves more effectively in order to have a greater say in the event.
Even so, there are more than enough resources at the level of the various business support organizations and the bigger private sector enterprises to plan and execute GuyExpo (with representation from the small business sector) without the sort of restrictive government oversight that has obtained until now. Even in instances where regional participation is included this can be facilitated at the bilateral private sector level.
The sense we get from talking to the small business vendors is that if indeed there will be no GuyExpo this year it would mean the denial of that aforementioned one-off significant market for their goods at a time when they say that they have experienced a ‘flat’ post-elections business period. More than that, we get a sense too that they would prefer much greater private sector involvement in the planning and execution of GuyExpo and an event that focuses much more pointedly on local and intra-regional products and markets.
