There is every likelihood that Guyana could be the centre of attention when the October 23-28 2022 Trade Americas, Caribbean Region Trade Mission and Business Conference gets underway in just over a week’s time.
In essence the event provides companies in the United States with an opportunity to take their pick of investment opportunities in several countries in the region including The Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
The event will be staged in what a Caribbean News Global report describes as “region-specific sessions,” that will address issues that include “market entry strategies, export compliance, legal, logistics, disaster resilience and recovery and trade financing resources.”
The event, the CNG report says, will allow for “prearranged one-on-one consultations with US & Foreign Commercial Service (US & FCS) commercial officers and/or Department of State economic/commercial officers with expertise in commercial markets throughout the region.”
Much of the focus is likely to weigh heavily on attention to investment possibilities in Guyana, a circumstance that is likely to be influenced by the plethora of business and investment opportunities that have opened up in the country on account of the image-transforming impact which the country’s oil and gas discoveries has created. Last week, a source at the Guyana Manufacturers & Services Association (GMSA) told the Stabroek Business that the event is likely to attract attention and active participation by representatives of both government and the private sector here. It is expected that the private sector will be just as interested as government officials will be in becoming involved in one-and-ones with potential US investors,” the source told the Stabroek Business. The source said that what is described in the CNG report as customized business-to-business matchmaking appointments” is likely to be one of the key areas of private sector interest for Guyana. Accordingly, the event is likely to witness the presence here in the Caribbean of significant numbers of potential buyers, agents, distributors and prospective joint venture partners whom, the CNG report says, “will provide participants with strategies for expanding their business across the region.”
With neighboring Suriname, which is currently on the cusp of commencing its own reportedly significant oil recovery exercise, investor interest there, like in Guyana, is likely to include efforts to secure contracts to undertake major infrastructural projects in the Caribbean Community’s only Dutch-speaking country.
While the enduringly clichéd argument that the Caribbean is “a natural commercial partner of the United States,” on account of the two being “tied closely together by geography, history, and culture” has become threadbare, the region has, over the years, provided insufficient prospects to attract sustained US business and investor interests.
The recent huge oil finds by Guyana and Suriname are now believed to have the potential to significantly adjust that dynamic, particularly given the oil and gas supplies quandary created for the west and potentially for the United States by the Russia/Ukraine hostilities.
The promoters of the forthcoming forum have been ‘marketing’ the event as a forum through which visitors from the US can “gain knowledge about the export opportunities and best prospects in key markets” in the Caribbean.
The forum is also being promoted as an opportunity for participants to create strategic plans to begin exporting and to increase market share in the region.
The Trade Americas team reportedly brings together the resources of the US Commercial Service in several countries as well as State Department, whose role will be to “help US exporters expand into new markets through timely market intelligence, trade events and matchmaking opportunities, and export counseling.”
