With local entrepreneurial growth, particularly in the agri-foods sector having long been hampered by chronic weaknesses in mechanisms to allow for businesses to access regional, extra-regional and even local markets, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), through its Regional Economic Project Initiative, is seeking to help remove that constraint by working with the state-run Small Business Bureau (SBB) to introduce an e-commerce regime designed to create a new opening for local products to benefit from significantly enhanced market access.
Earlier this week, IICA, in a brief on the initiative shared with the Stabroek Business, disclosed that it said that it will be partnering with the SBB and One Cart Company, a digital marketplace that enables businesses from across the country, to create their own ‘digital stores’ from where they can market their products. Asserting that the service will function “similar to Amazon,” the release said that the facility will allow consumers to secure all locally-produced agro-processed products online as well as to have those products delivered to their doorsteps utilising the One Cart delivery service. The service is expected to be launched during the first week in September.
IICA’s Georgetown office says that the initiative, which is being delivered through its Regional Economic Project, seeks to “support the national effort to drive e-commerce in Guyana. We are aware that across Guyana and regionally, many businesses struggle to tap into market opportunities at the national, regional, and moreso the international level.” It notes that while governments in the region have continually called for regional agri-food producers to take advantage of existing market opportunities which it says “are currently serviced by extra-regional players, producers often lack the capacity to do so.”
Agro-processors with whom this newspaper has spoken over a protracted period have bemoaned the fact that the considerable effort and resources that are poured into their production efforts are invariably not matched by adequate mechanisms that enable them to establish and maintain reliable contact with overseas, regional, and even local markets. Among their most frequent complaints are those that have to do with what they say is the high cost of conventional media marketing.
IICA says, meanwhile, that the travails of local and regional agri-food producers have been made worse by the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. “To this end, IICA alongside national, regional, and international partners, has undertaken a number of initiatives from which agripreneurs can benefit… We believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed stakeholders to recognize the value of the use of virtual platforms and e-commerce to engage buyers so as to improve their market reach and we must be well-positioned to capitalize on these new trends,” the IICA statement adds.
Commenting on its partnership with the One Cart platform, IICA says that it “allows local merchants to market their produce online while letting customers get their shopping done fast by saving them the time and hassle of joining queues.”
The service afforded by the Platform will allow subscribers to, among other things, own a ‘secure digital store with a dashboard that will allow them upload and manage product listings, review sales reports and sell in wholesale or retail quantities.”
Initially, the service will be provided to users free of cost with the arrangement being subject to review after a period of three or four months, during which time a decision on charges will be made. The initiative is attended by free training for the staff of participating companies that will allow for the efficient and effective use of the dashboard.
The release says that One Cart Dash, a trademark company of One Cart, provides an “on-demand delivery service that currently operates in Guyana” and that while its delivery service is currently confined to regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Ten, it is hoping to release either an app or a website that could see the expansion of the service.
Meanwhile, IICA says that in the period ahead it will be working with the Ministry of Tourism and Industry to “extensively promote the participating businesses.”
