Against the backdrop of testing challenges confronting the Essequibo business community in the face of last year’s loss of the Venezuelan PetroCaribe rice market, the ‘Cinderella County’s’ Chamber of Commerce in April elected a new executive headed by 63-year-old hotelier Deleep Singh, with a mandate to design strategies to galvanize the county’s economy.
The Essequibo Chamber is emerging from a three-year period of near dormancy. The Chamber was previously led mostly by bankers and other professionals; Singh is the first bona fide businessman to head it.
Rice and more specifically the loss of the PetroCaribe market is uppermost in the minds of the local business community and when Singh spoke with the Stabroek Business earlier this week, he dropped a broad hint that tough decisions are going to have to