Having just a few months ago undertaken a working visit to Region Nine where we conducted extensive interviews with businessmen and women from various economic sectors and with other sections of the community, the Stabroek Business was able to secure an enhanced understanding of the circumstances of the region, including its economic potential and some of the challenges that continue to suppress economic growth in the region. Its primary shortcoming, unquestionably, is that it has been, historically, a victim of fair promises and historic neglect.
In a more specific sense, transportation-related limitations in the matter of the movement of people and resources into the Region (including the limits to export of agricultural produce to the coast and the movement of goods inwards) has meant that the cost of living in the region is, to say the least, challenging.
Economic opportunities from which serious private sector investment would secure significant returns are few; the problem here being the absence of a market sufficiently substantial in size to make significant investment in consumer goods meaningful. Hoteliers in the region must surely be among the greatest risk-takers in the Guyana business community. There are no guarantees of sustained arrival of significant numbers of guests which is why even small cancellations, to say nothing about the cancellation of a major visitor event like the Rupununi Rodeo, can ruin hoteliers’ economic projections.
As we reported at the conclusion of our visit to the region late last year, serious commerce is, in large measure, the purview of Brazilian and Chinese businessmen and women. Ordinary Guyanese must make do, for the most part, with mostly small farming ventures, or else, pursue some form of paid employment.
Some of our more revealing interviews during our earlier visit we had with the ranchers of the Rupununi, mostly women. They come from long lines of ranching families and unquestionably, they are on top of their game… a tough breed of females, some of them have set aside other personal ambitions to keep alive family traditions and to maintain the materiel that go with it. It is a task that is doubly challenging on account of their physical location away from the coast.
The ranchers are proud people who appear to live for their missions and who, their myriad challenges notwithstanding, rarely if ever complain… at least vociferously.
There can be no question than that incessant un-actualised political promises of development in the Rupununi over the years represent a burden of guilt that rests on the shoulders of successive political administrations. The concept of hinterland development has been, for decades, a political tag line to be trotted out at strategic intervals, ritualistic reminders by the powers that be that they are vaguely aware of the existence of the hinterland. Promises of development unfailingly appear on the manifestoes of the respective political parties at election time, in a manner that reflects a shameless pandering to a people long-ignored.
The irony here is that while our political leaders and their governments appear to have permanently ‘parked’ the idea of a serious hinterland development plan, they never hesitate for a moment to parade the beauty of the country’s hinterland as something to boast about, as though they were the ones who invented it. It is one of those shameless excursions into hypocrisy that has been repeated ‘parrot fashion’ by successive political administrations over the years.
To understand the impact of the coronavirus and the consequential postponement of the Rupununi Rodeo for two successive years on the economy of the region, you have to first, understand the connection between the two. Every conceivable enterprise, ranging from hotel accommodation to peddling fruit, seeks to ‘cash in’ on the rodeo. That the rodeo was a ‘no show’ for two consecutive years, a circumstance that was attended by no official compensatory initiative, was shameful.
The economic transformation anticipated in the light of oil & gas, imposes upon the powers that be, the responsibility of compensating for its historic indifference to the hinterland. Government in such a circumstance may well be tempted to respond with what we in Guyana are wont to describe as ‘a lick and a promise’. The odd school, playground, modest community centre or, perhaps, sets of agricultural tools, all of which are attended by comical fanfare… the time for that is past and gone. The people of Region Nine and the remainder of our interior communities must now be accorded the level of respect that affords them a standard of living that causes them to believe that they belong. That has never been done previously and it is high time that it is done.
