Business Editorial

It is not just Guyanese who have been slipping in and out of daydreams arising out of the seemingly limitless prospects that repose in the country’s fast arriving oil and gas sector.

Two things have long been clear about the challenges facing the Government Analyst-Food & Drugs Department (GAFDD) in the matter of its responsibility to protect the country from the proliferation of likely unwholesome imports into the country and the attendant consequences.

The report in the Wednesday November 13 issue of the Stabroek News that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) did not, after all, provide certifying clearance for the four containers of assorted food items imported from Canada by Guyanese businessman Faizal Asif Iqbal Alli which were impounded on the authority of the Government Analyst-Food & Drugs after being deemed unsafe for consumption is both relieving and disturbing.

This week’s announcement that the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) is collaborating with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to help local agro-processors improve their competency in areas that are critical to the growth and development of their respective business ventures is good news and this newspaper’s first reaction to the announcement is that no effort should be spared to ensure that the optimum number of agro-processors, critically, from the farthest flung areas of the country as funding and logistics permit, secure an opportunity to benefit from the project.

The news that the ExxonMobil will commence commercial oil production in December would have come as a surprise to many Guyanese given that, for some time now, ‘the first quarter of 2020’ had been the widely publicized timeline for the development. 

There are several things that are wrong with the failure of the Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago to have not invited officials from the local private sector to its “Guyana Safety Forum” ostensibly staged to address safety interests and which was reportedly dominated by companies from the twin-island Republic.

It is not often that the country’s major Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) pay focussed attention specifically to women in business.

Over time there has been a great deal of local chatter at official levels on the subject of embracing Guyanese in the diaspora in pursuit of the attainment of the country’s development goals.

The portents arising out of the late September meeting between Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago to discuss the twin-island Republic’s generally inhospitable posture towards the importation of a range of goods from Guyana are not particularly encouraging, at least not as things stand at this time.

In his conversations with the Stabroek Business on plans for Guyana’s participation in the October 9th – 10th Florida International Trade Conference and Expo, President of the Guyana-America Chamber of Commerce (GACC) Wesley Kirton went to considerable lengths to emphasize the efforts that the Chamber had made to ensure adequate participation at the event by local small businesses including arrangements which the GACC had made to ensure that the participation of those small businesses benefitted from some measure of subsidy.

As is reported in today’s issue of the Stabroek Business, on Wednesday, thirty-five small business owners and aspirants, received grants of $200,000 each from the Small Business Bureau (SBB) that ought to go towards the building of their fledgling and in some instances, startup enterprises. 

In a short while, yet another group of creative people from the agro-processing and craft sectors, predominantly, will be heading for a high profile product display and marketing opportunity in the United States.

The news that two hundred and fifty minibus drivers and conductors from five coastal routes (Regions 3,4,5,6 and 7) “have recently benefitted from training in the areas of hospitality, first aid, tyre & fire safety, life & vehicle insurance, and defensive driving” would have come as a surprise to sizeable sections of the commuting population, though any initiative that seeks to retrieve this sector from the dire state in which it finds itself is welcome.

Hopefully the recent Nalco Champion episode, not least the protest by residents over plans to create a facility for the storage of chemicals at the JFL Inland Terminal, at 4055 Industrial Site, a location in immediate proximity to a residential area, will be sufficient to provide an enduring lesson for Guyana insofar as the onshore environmental implications of the country’s oil and gas pursuits are concerned.

The story published in this week’s issue of the Stabroek Business based on observations made by General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress Lincoln Lewis regarding what he believes is the obligation of the local Business Support Organisations (BSOs) to become more active in matters of workplace safety and health  is, in our view deserving of an editorial comment if only because, in a sense, it raises the issue of the extent of the role of those private sector bodies, that is to say where they responsibilities begin and where they end.

The primary purpose of the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) we are told, is to assemble artists, musicians, authors, and the various other strands of creative people and to display the folkloric, artistic and other creative manifestations of the Caribbean.

Where environmental concerns that impinge on the safety and health of the citizens are concerned, we in Guyana have lived pretty much ‘on the edge,’ so to speak.

When former Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin announced late last year that the 20 per cent ‘set aside’ provision that would allow small businesses to secure access to various types of state contracts worth up to $30 million would come on stream from January this year, the announcement, it seemed at the time, had come more out of a sense of unbridled optimism than against the background of any real certainty that that deadline could actually be met.

Not by accident our editorial this week addresses the subject of agro processing.

A few weeks ago the Stabroek Business reported on an announcement made by Professor Stefan Gift, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Graduate Studies and Research at the University of the West Indies, regarding what he said was the intention of the region’s foremost institution of higher education to push a Caribbean-wide entrepreneurial curriculum with a view to positioning graduates to pursue options to paid employment by establishing businesses of their own.