Last Sunday’s UncappeD Marketplace event marked another potentially key phase in the protracted search for a place of prominence in the country’s economic ‘sun’ for the agro processing sector. If that place remains difficult to find, the current acceleration of the search by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Business would appear to be heading in the right direction.
It’s easier to demand more in a hurry. The reality is, however, that over the years, both the public and private sectors, the former by simply failing to invest sufficient resources into the sector and both by failing to work together, have left local agro-processing struggling. That does not mean that the current effort to salvage and grow the sector should not be recognized.
How to boost production of raw materials necessary for the growth of a thriving agro processing sector, apply the science necessary to ensure high-quality products, fund the machinery to ensure more efficient production, significantly upgrade packaging and labeling, increase local and export demand in the face of formidable external competition, improve food safety standards and – perhaps above everything else – arrive at a point of affordable electricity are all challenges which the sector faces…simultaneously.