Next week’s 2022 (October 23-28) Trade Americas, Caribbean Region Trade Mission and Business Conference will, not for the first time in recent months, offer US companies the opportunity to assess investment prospects in fourteen markets in the region, not least Guyana, where the country’s meteoric rise to the status of an oil producer has eased it ahead of the rest of the region as an investment haven.
News of the forum has been ‘doing the rounds’ for several weeks now and apart from Guyana, The Bahamas, Barbados and Eastern Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago will be seeking to attract the attention of potential investors.
Information emanating from Miami indicates that next week’s gathering will place emphasis on what one report describes as “region-specific sessions, market entry strategies, export compliance, legal, logistics, disaster resilience and recovery and trade financing resources.” The forum will also reportedly make allowances 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.”
Oil-rich Guyana has now become used to this type of exposure which will attract both public and private sector representation. The forum will also pay particular attention to “customized business-to-business matchmaking appointments… that will provide participants with strategies for expanding their business across the region.”
While the Caribbean as a whole reportedly represents a market of about 27 million people who collectively imported over $21 billion of US goods in 2018, the value of the region as a ‘business partner” with the US has increased significantly since Guyana’s 2015 oil find and the country being elevated to the role of an oil producer. The region is now believed to be the third largest export market for US manufactured goods in Latin America behind only Mexico and Brazil.
The current incentive to the US resulting from the oil-driven increase in demand for US goods and services in Guyana, particularly, would appear to have chastened the US given that its Trade Americas team will reportedly marry the resources of the US Commercial Service in fourteen countries as well as State Department functionaries at US Embassies. These, information from the US says, will “help US exporters expand into new markets through timely market intelligence, trade events and matchmaking opportunities, and export counseling.”
Here in Guyana, the advent of oil and the attendant internationalization of Guyana as the region’s investment haven has provided local officials in both public and private sectors with opportunities to engage potential investors from various countries in high-level investment-related exchanges as well as to plan and execute local conferences that attract high-profile investors from abroad.
