Business Editorial

It is hard to think of any national issue that has secured more traction with the populace over the past two years than the issue of the discovery of oil offshore Guyana and the processes involved in recovering and exploiting the commodity for the nation’s benefit.

The materialization of a report that allows some insights into the performance of the much vaunted Small Business Bureau in terms of its role in kick-starting a transformation in the small business sector finally allows us the opportunity to evaluate what it has accomplished so far, what some of its failings are and what sorts of adjustments/corrective measures it might take.

It is widely believed that if smoothly implemented and scrupulously monitored the actualization of the provision in the Small Business Act of 2004 for a 20% allocation of government’s “goods and services” contracts to small businesses could make a major, positive difference to the country.

The breathing space afforded City Hall in the wake of central government’s intervention to liquidate the City’s indebtedness to Cevons Waste Management and Puran Brothers and to foot the bill for services up to the end of December last year, is over.

It would be entirely fair to say that successive political administrations in Guyana have, over time, continually squandered what, unquestionably, have been glaring opportunities to take advantage of the fact that Brazil, by far this continent’s largest country with the biggest economy, shares a border with us.

During an extended discourse with the Stabroek Business on Wednesday, Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin went to some trouble to make the point that the APNU+AFC administration was particularly keen to provide a convivial environment within which to attract investor attention and (in the presence of Go-Invest Chief Executive Officer, Owen Verwey) made the point that one of his Ministry’s priorities was to properly position and equip Go-Invest to provide the various services associated with investor inquiries.

The pragmatism associated with the decision to significantly scale down the size of a sugar industry which has become a significant financial strain on the rest of the economy and on the country as a whole cannot gainsay the hardships at individual, family and community levels that will accrue from the alarming levels of job losses, some of which have already been announced.

Early in 2016, Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman raised eyebrows in the country when he declared that the amount of gold being smuggled out of Guyana amounted to around 15,000 ounces weekly.

As is one of our more important editorial roles, the Stabroek Business has continually provided a measure of exposure for emerging businesses of various types that are still to meet the stage where they can afford to adequately market their ventures.

One of the stories published in this issue of the Stabroek Business recounts the persistence in the face of considerable obstacles of a young mother and budding entrepreneur who would appear to have chosen a business path that aligns with her academic studies and her work experiences and who, in her exchange with this newspaper, served as a voice for a considerably larger number of small and medium sized manufacturers whose enterprises continue to be squeezed by constraints which, given the application of the appropriate initiatives, are eminently remediable.

Like so many other institutions and individuals in Guyana the Stabroek Business has been  observing local developments at both the public and private sector levels as well as the contemplations of public commentators in the matter of what now appears to be the imminent commencement of the exploitation of oil and gas in Guyana’s territorial waters beginning in 2020.

The coincidence between what had appeared to be some distinct signs that the frosty relationship between the APNU-AFC administration and the private sector might have been moving in the direction of a gradual thaw and the recent sudden and dramatic reversal occasioned by the announcement by President David Granger that Justice James Patterson was his choice to be the next Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission is worrying in more ways than one.

The weaknesses in the local agro-processing sub-sector have, over the past year or two, secured increasing traction as a talking point at various fora.

As 2020 draws closer the learning curve associated with Guyana becoming an oil and gas country will become steeper.

There are a whole host of reasons why Guyana’s agro processing sector has been unable, up until now, to deliver to anywhere near its fullest potential.

You get a strong sense from some of what transpired at yesterday’s public/private sector encounter at the Marriott Hotel that many things continue to be unwell in the relationship between the APNU+AFC administration and the private sector, more specifically the Private Sector Commission  (PSC).

The disclosure yesterday that DDL is looking to invest $10 billion dollars in consolidation and expansion initiatives over the next three years is good news in more ways than one.

This week’s departure of a consignment of local rice for Cuba lends continuity to a series of developments in business relations between Guyana and Cuba which would appear to be heading in the right direction.

Arising out of an aggressive lobby by small miners some of whom complained of being hostage to a regime of exploitative landlordism under which they were compelled to mine gold on lands controlled by the ‘big players’, we have witnessed, recently, the emergence of Mining Syndicates, essentially cooperatives that bring together groups of small miners to ‘work’ areas of land allocated to them by the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission.

There appears to be a real sense of enthusiasm amongst the leaders of the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) whom this newspaper met with earlier this week to discuss issues affecting the growth and development of the sector.