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.”