If the recent promotional event at the Marriott Hotel is anything to go by it appears that there is considerable enthusiasm for the September 19th – 22nd Guyana Trade and Investment Exhibition (GUYTIE) which brings together the local public and private sectors in collaboration with the Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export), its mission being to launch an experimental initiative in an effort to kick-start a long overdue project aimed at providing results-oriented interaction between local export-ready entities and buyers outside of Guyana with a view to significantly expanding overseas markets for locally manufactured products.
It would come as no surprise, however, if the entrepreneurial community adopts a ‘wait and see’ posture, chastened as they have become by the protracted start-stop outcomes of previous initiatives to get the overseas marketing show on the road. GUYTIE, we are told, will be replacing GUYEXPO, (at least in terms of our export market drive) which, over the years and for all its popularity with visitors to the product displays (looking mostly for a night of distraction from their routines) failed to attract the attention of overseas buyers, its underperformance in this regard widely believed to be a function of organizational shortcomings.
This time around the planning appears to be more measured. GUYTIE, it seems has recruited a wider cross-section of public and private sector entities and there appears to be a greater focus to its stated objective of bringing potential buyers to Guyana to interface with local export-ready companies in what will, hopefully, be engagements that realize greater success in kick-starting meaningful export markets for local products. That, at least, is how it seems and we must hope, of course, that the emphasis on exposure for ‘export-ready’ products is indeed the focus of the event. For all its good intentions it was clear that many of the vendors who turned up at GUYEXPO with export market ambitions were nowhere close to meeting most of the demanding criteria that had to do with product quality, volumes and packaging and labeling. Frankly, even in the instance of GUYTIE, the list of so-called export-ready companies does not appear to have gotten much past our manufacturers in the rum and spirits sector.
As with GUYEXPO, the GUYTIE event will feature a broader product display segment that allows the lesser players in the manufacturing sector to display their goods in an environment that allows them to measure themselves against their export-ready counterparts and perhaps even to begin conversations with potential buyers that allow them to set targets towards the eventual goal of export-readiness. These engagements will, however, only bear meaningful fruit if the appropriate engagement fora are put in place which, all too frequently, was not the case with GUYEXPO. The point should be made as well that at some stage, hopefully as quickly as possible after GUYTIE has come and gone we ought to have some official assessment of the extent to which it has realized its objectives in terms of establishing agreements/understandings/partnerships that seem likely to kick-start meaningful export arrangements. Here again, acquiring meaningful post-event information on outcomes for public consumption has not been one of the strengths of the administrative machinery associated with GUYEXPO.
The point should be made, incidentally, that it is not at all a bad idea to retain GUYEXPO, the brand having served the not unimportant purpose of providing the biggest single one-off market for a wide cross-section of vendors. In this context there is a clear case for raising the level of organization of the event, increasing its periodicity and significantly improving the arrangements for hinterland product producers to access that market.
To return to the September GUYTIE event which is now exactly two months away it would be a comforting idea to have the planning, going forward, take place in the full glare of public scrutiny since closed-door planning often has a way of coming up short, evidence of this frequently manifested in last minute rushes to put ‘finishing touches’ in place, a pursuit that is usually informed by awkward corner-cutting that usually impacts negatively on the broader execution of the event. Frankly, there is something in the nature of oversized ‘planning committees’ that generate inertia and underperformance and in this instance such committees should not be spared the public opprobrium that ought to attend underperformance. We have, surely, reached a point, where we can no longer afford to routinely accommodate contrived bureaucratic reasons as excuses for costly failures. If GUYTIE is to make a difference in terms of creating new and hopefully meaningful external markets that result in job-creation and provide some measure of incentive for those local entities that aspire towards becoming exporters and by extension growing their businesses then we clearly need to find a way of jettisoning the habit to tendering vacuous reasons for organizational failure.
Perhaps the most important point to be made about GUYTIE is the fact that it limits participation to local companies that are export-ready and here the term export-ready can be taken to mean a number of things. For example, we can safely take export-ready to mean those local companies that have already made a mark on the international market (rum, timber, jewellery and some brands of spices and condiments can be included here) though that demanding definition excludes the vast majority of micro, small and medium-sized businesses all of which can quickly be disqualified on one ground or other, one of those being the limitations on their ability to supply high-volume international markets. What we must aim for, however, is a situation in which the September GUYTIE event, specifically its outcomes, not only creates new markets for our export-ready entities but sets targets (in terms of meeting export criteria) at which other enterprises can aim.
