While the paradigms of a relationship between the new political administration and the local private sector are yet to take definitive shape, Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC) Norman McLean earlier this week at a forum at the Pegasus Hotel, pledged the business community’s “unreserved support” for the administration’s national development programme though he was quick to add that the private sector intended to hold the government’s feet to the fire.
Some private sector leaders have already held meetings with President David Granger and while Stabroek Business understands that arising out of the meeting the PSC is in the process of planning a national economic forum in which government will participate, the posture of the business community has been a largely low-key one since the new administration entered office.
Just over two weeks ago Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin challenged the assertion that business has slowed down significantly since the May 11 general elections though President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Lance Hinds told this newspaper subsequently that his conversations with local businessmen had indeed led him to believe that there had been some level of shrinkage in commercial activity.
In his address, McLean dropped an unmistakable hint that the business community was looking forward to a more convivial environment asserting that while the private sector was eager to “play any role it could” in improving the country’s economy, it was also anticipating the enhancement of its ability of “to earn more than subsistence level revenue.”
He alluded to issues that have formed part of the age-old agenda of what has often been an acrimonious public/private sector discourse including “astronomical energy charges, high customs fees and long, undue delays to process import and export documents. We were pleased to learn that the new government is going to confront these issues in the short term.”
Before a gathering of mostly local business leaders, McLean also committed the private sector to “changing the business landscape from reliance on the sale of raw products to promoting new businesses that process rice, fruits and vegetables, meat and milk, wood, bauxite byproducts” as well as transforming the variety of medicinal plants into secondary and tertiary products.
And in less than veiled reference to another long-standing issue between government and the private sector McLean said the business community was also seeking to “eliminate the barriers to external trade which our exporters have been dealing with for many years,”
This matter has been on its agenda with the previous political administration during much of its tenure.
The PSC Chairman called for more official support for the creative and services sectors including fashion design, music, tourism, and ICT, which industries, he said, are all major revenue earners. “In fact, in Guyana and the wider Caribbean, this sector is becoming more and more lucrative,” accounting for 62 per cent of the cumulative revenue generated across the region.
“In individual Caribbean countries, services trades are now major contributors to our Gross Domestic Products,” he added. Some Caricom territories have already established national coalitions of service industries.
