Recently-elected President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) Shyam Nokta has told the Stabroek Business that the Association intends to move quickly to engage with “a political administration that reflects the will of the people” with a view to lending continuity to previous discourses with government on issues affecting various sub-sectors in the manufacturing sector in Guyana.
In a brief telephone interview earlier this week, Nokta, whose return to the leadership of one of country’s key Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) comes a year after he had completed two successive terms – 2017 – 2019 – in that position, told this newspaper that the Association was ready to engage government in discourses on issues affecting the performance of the country’s manufacturing sector with a view to beginning a process that would lead to remedial attention at the earliest time.
Nokta’s two previous terms at the helm of the GMSA were marked, particularly, by high-level engagements with government on challenging sectorial issues, though he conceded that those, while constructive, yielded less transformational change then had been hoped for. Watchers of the work of the Association credit Nokta’s earlier terms in office with the staging, for two successive years, of the GMSA’s UNCAPPED event which provided well-supported product promotion opportunities in the agricultural, agro processing, art and craft and fashion industries. The two events, which secured the support of the US oil exploration company, ExxonMobil served to bring dozens of local small businesses in the various sub-sectors to public attention and to contribute to market growth.
Nokta told the Stabroek Business that the GMSA was particularly concerned that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had made a telling impact on “all aspects of life in Guyana” and that he wanted the GMSA to play an important role in the recovery process.
The new GMSA President told the Stabroek Business that among the other issues that were high on his administration’s agenda were various “strategic initiatives” aimed at enhancing the quality of service offered by the Association. “One of our main priorities will be the convening of meetings with the various sub-sectors in the first instance in order to determine what their main challenges are. We need to know what the challenges are on the ground if we are to have a meaningful agenda, going forward. More than that we need to try to move quickly into recovery mode,” Nokta said.
Setting aside the fact that the executive of the GMSA remains largely unchanged, the leadership group which Nokta heads is likely to face a familiar agenda. The sector as a whole is certain to have to sit across the table with government to discuss its familiar electricity woes, by far the leading grouse confronting manufacturers.
The GMSA, meanwhile, will, according to Nokta, be moving to strengthen the links that it had earlier established with small manufacturers in the various sub-sectors particularly through the staging of the UNCAPPED events and the marketing spinoffs that accrued therefrom.
Beyond those pursuits, Nokta told the Stabroek Business that small businesses in the various sub-sectors can expect to continue to get the attention of the GMSA under its current administration. “We definitely want to continue to work with the small business sector in areas such as training and marketing and to stage events like UNCAPPED,” he said.
With the return of Nokta to the presidency of the GMSA talks with government are also likely to return to the future of the forestry sector, an issue on which he has been vocal in the past and which had featured in talks between the two during his earlier terms in office. This week he confirmed that the challenges facing the forestry sector continued to be a matter of concern to the GMSA adding that the Association envisaged “a big role” for operators in the forestry and wood-processing sectors.
With the pursuits of the GMSA focusing, over time, primarily on the manufacturing sector, Nokta told Stabroek Business that during his term in office, the Association will be focusing greater attention on the services sector. That sector, comprising businesses that provide intangible products including retail, transport, distribution and food services have, over the years, secured only limited attention from local business Support Organizations. (BSO’s).
