The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and the Private Sector Commission (PSC) may share a common objective of working to create an enabling environment for the enhancement of the interests of the country’s business community, but that does not mean that there is always unanimity on a common approach to that goal, GCCI President Vishnu Doerga has told Stabroek Business.
In what amounted to a frank admission that relations between the country’s two premier business support organizations could be better, the Chamber President said he believed that enhanced collaboration between the two private sector bodies can strengthen the capacity of the business sector to realize common goals. He added, however, that his concession that there were “differences” should not be interpreted to mean that either body had lost sight of the common objective of continuing to work in the interest of the business sector. “The GCCI is a sectoral member of the PSC,” Doerga told Stabroek Business, “and that says something about our commitment to a common set of objectives.”
Comments from informed members of the business sector alluding to what one Chamber official has described as “distance” between the two business support organizations have led to speculation that the two might be moving in separate directions, but Doerga was quick to erase that view. He told Stabroek Business that it would be erroneous to suggest that the two were running on different tracks as far as end objectives were concerned though he made it clear that the GCCI understood its responsibility to its members. “We still have a mandate and a responsibility to our members and we are determined to pursue that mandate,” Doerga said.
Over the years the PSC and the GCCI have, to a significant extent, shared a common membership base with some business leaders having headed both organizations at one time or another. The PSC is regarded as the lead business support organization specifically in terms of serving as a lobbying force for the interests of the business community and engagements with government on business-related issues. There has been little if any comment from the Chamber over the past year on an earlier rumoured meeting between government and the private sector though this newspaper had learnt that the GCCI had been largely shut out of the planning process. Just recently, Stabroek Business was told by a PSC functionary that that meeting was probably no longer on the cards, at least in the short term. No reason was provided for the postponement of what is seen by sections of the business community as a necessary meeting.
This newspaper’s extended exchange with Doerga on Tuesday left the impression that the Chamber was concerned that public statements by the private sector shift to various forms of practical and, where necessary, more direct engagement with government and other agencies designed to ensure that private sector bodies pursue the mandate given them by their members. ”We have to go beyond talk. We have work to do. We have actual work to do. All this talk has not gotten us anywhere. Our members can’t continue to hear talk. We also need to have concrete action. Neither the government nor any other partner is going to sit and wait for us to get our act together. We are aware of that and we have been taking action to play our part,” the GCCI President said.
The most recent indication of differences in the relationship between the two private sector bodies surfaced earlier this week when a letter from PSC Chairman Edward Boyer appeared in the Stabroek News distancing the Commission from a meeting between the GCCI and the Georgetown City Council during which the now highly controversial parking meter project and the thorny container tax issue were discussed. “None of its members attended any formal meeting with Her Worship Mayor Chase-Green. In fact, contrary to statements published (in the Stabroek News) the PSC made no request to hold formal discussions with the Mayor regarding the container tax or the issue of parking meters,” the letter said adding that “no member of the PSC was invited to meet with Mayor Chase-Green.”
Seemingly intended to make clear the PSC’s intention to distance itself from whatever outcomes may have arisen from the meeting, Boyer’s statement, a well-placed private sector official told this newspaper, “probably did as much to send a signal that all is far from well between the PSC and the GCCI since seemed to suggest that in some matters you might have expected that the two would have a similar position on those two issues. That does not seem to be the case.”
In recent weeks, this newspaper has engaged both organizations on several key business-related issues including tax reform, security reform and accelerating the process of information and communication technology liberalization. The Chamber, particularly, has, for some years now, been vociferous in identifying these issues as “barriers to Guyana’s competitiveness.” The body is on record as saying that “exceptionally high rates for corporate and income taxes… places a significantly disproportionate burden” on the country’s businesses.
Some of these same issues have been sent to the PSC by this newspaper for comment and earlier this week the Commission Chairman said that his organization was currently studying a number of business-related issues raised by the Stabroek Business with a view to providing responses.
