Government on Wednesday evening was served by the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) with an unmistakable reminder that the long-standing woes of the sector repose, overwhelmingly, in the protracted failure of successive political administrations to provide an electricity supply which, in terms of both quality and consistency meets the needs of a manufacturing sector striving for growth.
“Many of the long-standing jeopardies are inextricably linked to the high cost and unreliability of electrical power… Until we slay the beast of expensive and unreliable power, the private sector and particularly the manufacturing sector will continue to perform below potential resulting in a serious knock-on effect on jobs and on the wider economy,” GMSA President Clinton Williams declared in his address to the 24th Annual Presentation Awards and Dinner at the Pegasus Hotel on Wednesday December 18. And in his first address to the annual forum since being re-elected to the presidency of the GMSA following a two-year hiatus Williams placed on the table a GMSA recommendation that government “quickly enter into an appropriate arrangement that allows for the utilization of part of our current and future crude oil exports receipts for refined oil, at prices that are considerably cheaper than those that obtain at this time.”