In the wake of the controversy swirling around the Guyana Marketing Corpora-tion (GMC) arising out of allegations that the state-run entity has become caught up in a “massive fraud”, agro processors with whom the Stabroek Business spoke with last week and earlier this week have told this newspaper that while they believe that the GMC should remain a state-run entity, a body should be created “outside of the Ministry of Agriculture to be responsible for the running of the entity.” All of whom have benefitted in various ways, from the GMC, have told the Stabroek Business that their businesses “benefitted to varying degrees from the GMC and that the entity had earned the right to function independent of the Ministry.”
Over the past two weeks, and in the wake of stories concerning fraud within the state entity, small business owners who have benefitted from Agro Fests and Market Days staged by the state entity told the Stabroek Business that “as the name suggests”, as one interviewee put it, the GMC should be run by a Board appointed jointly by the government and the private sector which should be entirely responsible for “all of the operating aspects of the GMC.” The Stabroek Business undertook what, in effect, were largely brief telephone interviews arising out of reports which broke regarding what another section of the media reported regarding a purported “massive fraud at the entity which falls under the Ministry of Agriculture.”
This is not the first time that the operational effectiveness of the GMC has been called into question with one commentator asserting that the root of the problem reposed in the fact that over time there has been “no real clarity” regarding which state entity runs the GMC. That said, the near unanimous view among the Stabroek Business’ interviews is that while the state-owned agency should be accountable to the government it should be allowed with what one interviewee termed “a certain level of independence from a government ministry.”
The Stabroek Business’ interviews with Agro Processors in Regions Four, Five and Ten were undertaken against the backdrop of a surge of media reports pertaining to a “racket” which one section of the local media said “involved the smuggling of chicken and eggs.” The privately-owned Kaieteur News in its Friday September 12 issue asserted that “a massive fraud” had been “uncovered at the GMC after the General Manager had ‘ordered’ an audit,” after Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha had earlier been quoted as saying that he had initiated a probe of what he described as certain “irregularities and discrepancies” at the GMC.
Information disseminated by the GMC itself has described the GMC as “a government corporation established under section 46 of the Public Corporations Act, Cap 19:05 of the Laws of Guyana that has been working assiduously over the years to promote the cultivation and export of Guyana’s non-traditional agricultural crops to Regional and Extra-Regional markets.” While, however, the GMC has gained considerable national attention for what, previously had been its aggressive promotion of local agricultural/agro processed goods the entity has been unable, over the years to successfully create sustained markets for local products in exports, an assignment for which the Jamaica Products Corporation (JAMRO) has secured an enviable reputation.
While state-disseminated information asserts that the role of the GMC is to “promote the cultivation and export of Guyana’s non-traditional agricultural crops to Regional and Extra-Regional markets” the GMC has not been recognized as being dominant in that pursuit. For the most part its role appears to be confined to coordinating the staging of state-sponsored Agro Processing events in Guyana and the Caribbean while, of late, the latter responsibility would appear to have been ‘hived off’ to the Guyana Office for Investment (GOINVEST). There has been no official word as to when (or, indeed whether) a public probe into the alleged irregularities will take place or whether the GMC will, in the longer term, continue to function under the management structure that is in currently in place, going forward.
