Credit must go to both the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) and the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) for what has now become their successive ‘offerings’ of the UncappeD and Farmers Market Day events, both of which are essentially product-promotion events with an eye to providing markets, albeit limited ones, for our farmers and our agro-processors. Both of these events have now become fairly popular with viewers and buyers, though, without the benefit of analytical reports that probe their outcomes in a manner that answers important questions about their effectiveness, (these reports, incidentally, ought to be made available to the media) we are unlikely to discern their real impact, either in terms of consumer appeal or material returns for the producers/vendors.
In the instance of the GMSA’s UncappeD event, it has served to afford us glimpses of the significant strides that our agro-processing sub-sector has made. In recent years our agro-processors have demonstrated not just the stamina to ‘stay in the game’ in circumstances where the constraints and the temptation to quit have been considerable, but also the determination to raise their game to a level where, in several outstanding instances, our major local retail outlets now have no legitimate excuse to deny them access to their shelves laden with foreign products.
In the instance of the GMC, it continues to make a mark in terms of promoting small and micro businesses, the customary constraints, including the bureaucratic ones associated with being a state agency notwithstanding. However, we need to know far more regarding what one might call the ‘bottom line’ as far as the real outcomes of these events are concerned, otherwise we cannot be blamed for thinking (as some observers do) that the repetition of these events amounts to no more than simply going through the motions.
In the instance of UncappeD, it is easily the single most meaningful private sector contribution to the growth of the small business sector, that has been a generally crowd-pleasing affair, well-supported by the manufacturers (the horticultural sector has also been able to enjoy a ‘look in’ at both the Farmers’ Market and UncappeD events) that continues to provide an enhanced measure of local market exposure for the vendors. In fact, recently, it was pleasing to note that two of our local products that had ‘cut their teeth’ so to speak through the support of the GMC and the GMSA’s UncappeD event have attracted attention in Canada and may yet secure a breakthrough to greater things.
For all the pleasing work that has been done by the two agencies and the contribution that they have made to raising the profile of some small business enterprises, more needs to be done. Routinised events like the Farmers’ Market and the UncappeD event, somehow, create the impression of going through the motions, since, in the final analysis there is not created – at least as far as we know – any serious post-event assessment/analysis that provides any indication of the substantive outcomes, specifically in terms of enhancing the well-being of the investors and the enterprises. The constraints that continue to confront these investors and their businesses including capital access and market opportunity challenges have been well-documented and need hardly be repeated here, though it is worth mentioning, as this newspaper has done before, that if as we do, we are to continue to embrace, in good faith, the significant investments of Trinidadian companies like Massy and ANSA McAl, among others in Guyana, then our economic diplomacy efforts (and, incidentally, this is as much a local private sector responsibility as it is a government one) must assertively roll back the unacceptable protectionism that keeps so much of our locally-produced goods out of that country. We cannot, on the one hand, assert our support for the expansion of market opportunities for locally produced goods that help to grow our small and medium-sized businesses, whilst ignoring the posture of arrogance and contempt that informs Trinidad and Tobago’s sustained protectionist assault on our economy. It is either they open their markets to a legitimate trading relationship on an equal footing, or else we begin to contemplate persuasive measures of causing them to ‘see the light,’ so to speak.
But that is not the central thrust of this editorial. Its focus is on raising questions that originate at home, with the fact that events like our Farmers’ Market and the UncappeD event continue to be denied the publicly available post-event analyses that serve as rudders with which to determine the progress that we are making in the requisite sectors and whether, rather than go down the same road over and over again, we may not have learnt things from the previous event that provide reason for some kind of recalibration. This, of course, is not to take away from the high points of both of these events but to take a ‘lessons learnt’ approach that helps to fashion a sense of direction for the next time around.
As for The Guyana Shop, we believe that its purpose as a product-promotion facility for locally produced goods would be far better served if government were to invest in a somewhat more salubrious environment that would afford far more shelf space to a greater number of products and allow for an enhanced level of visitor-friendliness that would encourage greater curiosity and patronage. Naturally, all of the various other appurtenances, including the requisite shopping environment and a particular mindfulness of product quality and labelling and packaging will also have to be put in place.
