One of the inevitable knock-on effects of the global attention that Guyana has secured, ‘overnight,’ as a result of it joining the ranks of oil producers, is the expectation that the country’s new-found high profile will be attended by upgraded standards across a wider swathe of pursuits, not least the quality of the goods and services that it offers outside of the oil and gas sector. The global petro attention from which Guyana now benefits, has wandered off into areas outside the oil and gas sector, essentially piggy-backing on the country’s now widely recognized petro status.
The point should be made that Guyana can anticipate no favours on a global market in which product standards are a critical criteria for market acceptance. In a world of increasingly intense consumer ‘pickiness’ all that Guyana’s global attention has done is to remind of the need for the country to raise its game. Here, there are risks involved in allowing the conventional, less than stringent quality standards that have traditionally persisted, since we would be doing so at the risk of losing out on what is an existing significant global demand for food. It is here that the state-run Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) comes in, its role being to apply a particular set of standards to ‘home made’ products in order to help those products secure the widest possible international market acceptance.
What the advent of the GNBS has essentially done is to remove from state and private sector producers of goods the prerogative of passing their own quality-related judgment on the goods that they produce by verifying their adherence to standards. What this has done is to restrict the marketing of some locally produced goods from both local consumption in the absence of conferral of the verification procedures with which the GNBS is charged. In effect, what the GNBS has done is to inhibit – though not necessarily remove altogether – the ease of marketing locally manufactured products outside of Guyana without being mindful that these meet the requisite phyto – sanitary and other standards. One of the signal accomplishments of the GNBS has been to cause local agro-processors, particularly to work more assiduously to ensure the raising of sanitary and phyto sanitary standards thereby expanding the marketability of their reach across regional and international markets.
While the entry of sub-standard products into Guyana, through smuggling and ‘deals’ may allow the circumvention of official inspection, the GNBS’ Product Compliance Department has been engaged in inspecting, and in some instances, seizing and destroying sub-standard imports, the recent seizure and destruction of more than 11,000 pieces of electrical fittings including wires, cables, lamp holders, circuit breakers extension cords, power outlets, switches and plugs raising questions as to whether the country’s building sector is not being seriously short-changed as it immerses itself in what is almost certainly the busiest period in its history. There being no sign of a slowdown in the growth of the Guyana economy in the age of profuse oil production, it would appear that, going forward, the GNBS will have its hands filled associated with meeting the challenges linked to a critical phase of the country’s development.
