Introduction
Today’s column closes the discussion we are having on production of timber and non-timber products in Guyana’s extractive forest sector over the past decade (2006-2015). Last week’s column revealed that, similar to employment in the sector, production has been equally weak, fluctuating, and declining, as was exhibited earlier, in the sector’s macroeconomic/ national accounts performance.
It is standard to attribute this outcome of the sector’s production to two features. One is the negative impacts of weather events on output in tropical rainforests. Evidence has shown, these are notoriously negative and their avoidance requires great care is taken to plan production based on anticipated weather patterns. Unfortunately, this is rarely done by Guyana’s forest operators.
The second feature is the so-called mixed impact of the demand for wood products in both domestic and external markets. The domestic and external markets do not behave uniformly, and this is reflected in the pattern of product sales. Basically, it is found that the export market has been the main driver of production, with the shares of the local market seemingly residual. However, this circumstance is not true for all operators. As a rule, the larger ones, especially foreign-owned businesses,