A recent Stabroek Business ‘survey’ among a limited number of local Agro Processors who ‘double up’ as vendors has again yielded ‘eye-opening’ insights into what respondents feel are ‘weak links’ in the overall official effort to raise the profile and enhance the marketability of locally manufactured agro-produce on the local and international markets. The Stabroek Business’ most recent ‘limited survey’ – an earlier limited one was effected some months ago – suggests that market demand would still appear not to be keeping pace with the range and volume of products appearing on the local market and, moreover, that production volumes and product presentation continue to place restrictions on success on international markets.
And while the fourteen agro processors from Georgetown, lower East Coast and lower East Bank of Demerara told the Stabroek Business that there now exists a heightened awareness of the range of agro –processed offerings available locally, more “structured” arrangements should be made to support the marketing efforts of the producers. The small agro processors with whom this newspaper surveyed over the past five weeks have all asserted that their marketing undertakings are limited, confined mostly to ‘home sales’ and to what some believe are the “too limited opportunities” afforded by state-sponsored marketing openings which are limited, mostly, to “special events.”
While respondents to the Stabroek Business‘ News’ limited survey agreed that the Agro Processing sector had benefitted from a more generous measure of attention in recent years they all asserted that locally manufactured spices and condiments still lag behind imported ones in terms of shelf space in prominent establishments. The respondents were unanimous in their view that since product presentation challenges served to restrict shelf exposure in what one respondent referred to as ‘high-end’ markets, local Business Support Organizations, along with government should be encouraged to “aggressively lobby” high profile food outlets in order to ensure that “the fullest range of local agro produce,” according to one respondent, have the opportunity of accessing “the best trading spaces” in order to allow maximum opportunity for adequate space on the market.
One East Coast Demerara Agro Processor bemoaned the fact that outside of the limited opening afforded by the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) there was no other consistently reliable opening for the marketing of the fullest range of local agro produce. Contextually, the Stabroek Business mini survey, not for the first time, yielded a vigorous lobby for the state to finance “an entire infrastructure that can provide adequate finance training and marketing opportunities for local agro processors who, manifestly, cannot compete on a level playing field with imported products or ‘high-end brand names,’” according to one respondent.
Meanwhile, the discourses with the Stabroek Business yielded positive producer responses to the efforts of the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) to better position local products to access local and international markets though they asserted that it did not appear that, up to this time, the efforts of the GNBS to raise the profiles of local products was being complemented by adequate marketing support from the state.
Not for the first time, a survey of this nature yielded ‘low marks’ for substantive “local marketing support” through state-financing of “high quality marketing outlets” that benefitted from “expert management” and “attention to global marketing trends.” One contributor volunteered that we (Guyana) “need to be sending people abroad to see how it is done,” a reference to what the respondent thought was the absence of a satisfactory level of training at the local level to ensure that products made in Guyana benefit from “the highest quality of marketing in Guyana, in the Caribbean and in potentially lucrative target markets in Europe and North America.”
As had been the case during this newspaper’s earlier (limited) survey, increasing numbers of local agro processors, while seemingly still some distance away from giving up on this line of business are concerned that, increasingly, they have been unable to rely entirely on the sector to meet their living expenses, notwithstanding significant investments made.
