Between forty-five and fifty of the local products that were part of last weekend’s UncappeD event at the Providence Stadium have reached a stage of development that renders them ready to be placed on the international market and the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) is prepared to work with the respective business owners to assist them in their pursuit of lucrative overseas markets, the organisation’s Vice President and Chairman of the body’s Agro Processing Sub Sector, Ramsay Ali, told the Stabroek Business on Sunday.
Returning to centre stage after a two-year absence on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UncappeD event made “a powerful statement” to both government and the private sector about the “sheer guts” of the business owners. “Unquestionably, those agro processors who are here over these two days notwithstanding the fact that many of them are still recovering from the pandemic sends a powerful message to government that much more resources have to be put towards their growth and survival,” Ali posited.
Agro processors at the UncappeD event to whom the Stabroek Business spoke said that a point had long been reached where the sums allocated by the Small Business Bureau (SBB) for investment in the growth of their enterprises were inadequate, One business owner told this newspaper that the Bureau is not, at this time, equipped to adequately meet the expanding needs of small businesses in the agro processing and creative sectors.
Ali said that the success of the two day UncappeD event had sent an important message to government and to the country as a whole regarding the resilience of small businesses and of the importance of allocating more resources to the development of those sectors, particularly the agro processing sector.
Speaking with the Stabroek Business even as visitors were arriving at the Stadium to experience the final few hours of the two day event, Ali noted that the fact that small businesses, many of which had been built on fragile foundations, had survived the worst effects of the coronavirus pandemic, some of them even managing to realise a measure of growth in the process, was something that the country can be proud of. “What the UncappeD event did was to send a powerful message which suggests that it has more than earned their support and that micro and small businesses in the agro processing and creative sectors had more than earned the right to continue to secure the support of government.
According to Ali, a total of 107 agro processors responded to the invitation to attend the UncappeD event. He said that an evaluation of the products on display suggested that “about 45 to 50 products” are now ready for the export market. “They have satisfied all of the regulations and procedures including those that had to do with packaging and labelling which as you know are important as far as the export market is concerned.”
Shortly after the SBB was launched in 2010, concerns had been expressed that it had not been equipped with the requisite resources to match the needs of its members.
