Our decision to lend an even higher level of editorial attention than we customarily do to micro and small businesses in the agriculture and agro-processing sectors has to do with the predicament that many businesses of these types find themselves in on account of the strictures that have arisen out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is a randomness to the selection of the enterprises that we have identified for coverage, our only mission here being to point to examples that are, in fact, microcosms of a wider challenge. Here, one might add, this exercise is being undertaken in collaboration with the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) and the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA), both of which have indicated an interest in helping us focus attention of the entities for which we provide coverage in the hope that businesses of those types will attract a greater level of patronage.
Careful thought has been put into what we concede is a limited initiative. Whatever success it realises will depend on the degree of responsiveness demonstrated by the commercial outlets and ordinary consumers that can help increase the sales made by these entities during what is in fact, a season of crisis for them.
Having been intimate with many of these small and micro businesses for quite a few years, it is our judgement that COVID-19 has thrown them into circumstances of acute crisis. There is little doubt in our minds that unless they benefit from the right responses many of them will not survive the pandemic.
Here it becomes a matter of how we see small and micro businesses. Beyond being simply a collection of entities, many of which may enjoy no more than vendor status, the micro- and small-business sector represents many hundreds of families of modest means that are saddled with all of the responsibilities associated with the preservation of livelihoods and with human development. Moreover, what these businesses have done, is to bring new, creative, and in many instances, potentially lucrative dimensions to the Guyana economy, particularly in terms of their growth potential.
Frankly, it has to be said that many of these entities have remained at their stunted levels largely on account of investor disinterest in their growth, a disinterest that also extends to banks and business organisations. Having attended the various Vending Fairs and Farmers’ Markets sponsored by organisations like GMSA, SBB, and the GMC, we are persuaded that initiatives of this type should become commonplace and should embrace much greater numbers of participants. Here, it is the across-the-board recognition of the importance of these kinds of activities that is important.
There is only one objective to this editorial focus. It is to continue to shine a light on the entire micro- and small-business community and to encourage consumers to support these now-struggling enterprises. We are, as well, repeating what we have said before about the need to significantly upgrade the services being provided by the GMC through its Guyana Shop. What exists helps and as a symbol it is important. There is no doubt, however, that the extent of its contribution to the ‘marketing’ of local produce, particularly agro-produce is, relatively speaking, unacceptably limited and simply must be upgraded. There is manifestly immense value in investing in the creation of a high-class consumer outlet facility, with all the appurtenances of a modern supermarket that can place an enhanced promotional face on local goods. That is a responsibility that the state ought to have accomplished long ago. This, incidentally, is not the first time that we are saying this.
We will persist in our promotional features and in our appeals to consumers to ‘touch base’ with those micro and small business covered in our columns. They need our support at this time.
