Even as the various product displays including the UNCAPPED event continues to provide evidence of potential for further growth in the country’s agro processing sector, small and medium scale investors remain concerned that the extent of their investments are not matched by opportunities to access lucrative international markets the returns from which make those investments worthwhile.
While the optics of this year’s UNCAPPED event provide evidence of increased manufacturer investment in enhancing product quality and improving packaging and labeling standards in order to ensure that product quality and presentation meet external market expectations, those efforts, we were told, are not paralleled by corresponding external market opportunities that allow for small and medium scale investors to access markets that can maximize opportunities for securing meaningful returns on what they say are their increasingly substantial investments.
To this should be added concerns expressed by some of our interviewees over what they say is a less than level playing field in terms of state-afforded opportunities for local agro-processing enterprises to secure access to potentially lucrative external markets. In some instances there were anim,
This year the Stabroek Business focused on engaging participants in the UNCAPPED event, the majority of whom (we conducted short interviews with thirteen persons) made no secret of the fact that while they have been focusing on scaling up both product quality and packaging in order to take meet external market opportunities, what had been their anticipated growth ambitions remain largely unfulfilled.
At Providence last week the handful of participants in the UNCAPPED event which the Stabroek Business engaged alluded to the challenges – not least affordability – associated with expanding their marketing pursuits outside of Guyana, with some even asserting that opportunities to secure state assistance to external market opportunities are linked to officially orchestrated favoritism. Here it was pointed out that the affordability – or lack thereof – of meeting the cost of market exposure beyond Guyana meant that some local agro processing enterprises are inevitably being left behind.
While the recent UNCAPPED event provided evidence of a preparedness on the part of participants to make significant investments in their agro processing ventures, some of those with whom the Stabroek Business spoke asserted that in the face of the mounting costs associated with running agro processing businesses, some local agro processors had now set aside their external market dreams and were now focusing increasingly on what remains a strictly limited local market.
Much of this newspaper’s exchange with participants in this year’s UNCAPPED event raised specific questions about the extent to which state support for participants in the Annual Barbados Agro Fest event embraced the widest cross section of local Agro Processors. Beyond that some interviewees expressing concern over the paucity of information emanating from the organizers of the event to allow would-be participants in the Barbados Agro Fest to take full advantage of the opportunity.
While the optics of this year’s UNCAPPED event appeared to suggest that the Guyana Marketing & Services Association – organized event remains well-supported by both Agro Processors and visitors, questions persist regarding the extent to which the event serves as a sufficiently adequate springboard for the expansion of the sector into other more lucrative markets across the region and in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
While the UNCAPPED event, unquestionably provides a looking glass through which the growth of the local agro processing sector can be clearly seen, vendors whom, hitherto, appeared to be satisfied to simply ‘show up for the exposure’ are now linking the UNCAPPED event with ‘graduation’ to more lucrative local and external markets which, up to this time the event has been unable to provide to any significant degree.
