New entrepreneurial opportunities arising out of moves towards gradual economic liberalization in Cuba are resulting in closer business ties between Georgetown and Havana as the number of Cubans who travel to Guyana daily to purchase stock for their fledgling businesses back home increases, Chief Executive Officer of Roraima Airways Captain Gerry Gouveia has told Stabroek Business.
In recent months Gouveia has made two separate trips to Havana, seeking to firm up daily flights between Havana and Georgetown that bring up to 3,000 Cubans here every month. Having arrived here they spend at least one full day purchasing a range of items including clothing and hardware which they take back home. The new air service has emerged from an agreement between Roraima Airways and the Honduran airline Easy Sky.
Gouveia said he believes he is witnessing the genesis of a new phase in the relationship between Guyana and Cuba, which began more than a quarter of a century ago. Only this time around there is a different ideological underpinning to the relationship. The ongoing thaw in the relationship between Cuba and the United States, arguably one of President Barack Obama’s more profound foreign policy accomplishments, has spawned an entrepreneurial assertiveness amongst ordinary Cubans from which, Gouveia says, Caricom can benefit.
The launch of the Havana/Georgetown Easy Sky connection is the latest manifestation of what has become Gouveia’s proven knack for recognizing and exploiting an entrepreneurial opportunity.
\He concedes that he is driven by business opportunities such as this, but says he is equally moved about the softening of the Cuban regime’s ideological stance that has opened up a wider opportunity for Guyana and Caricom as a whole. “It is not an opportunity that should be missed.
Even though the cementing of the relationship between Guyana and Cuba happened in a different ideological era the Cubans still remember Guyana as a friend and are keen to do business with us.”
So successful has the venture become over a short period that the service between Havana has had to face significant challenges associated with moving Cargo back to Havana. “It is a challenge that we are doing our best to deal with at this time,” Gouveia says.
Meanwhile, the Roraima Airways boss said that arising out of talks with both public and private sector officials in Cuba, the two countries expect to create a Guyana/Cuba Business Development Council early next year. “The council will be private sector driven. From the Guyana side the Private Sector Commission will play a lead role while the Havana Chamber of Commerce will be our opposite number in Cuba. Government will be involved on both sides,” Gouveia said. The creation of the council will allow the two sides to sit down to discuss “the best and most practical ways of doing business together,” he added.
In pursuit of this objective a PSC delegation will travel to Cuba early next year to meet with private sector counterparts there.
