Business Editorial

Up until news broke earlier this week that Dr. Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon had tendered his resignation as President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), there had been a lengthy period during which a paucity of information prevailed in the matter of the reason(s) why the St.

By failing, up until now, to provide the people of the Caribbean with an update on the state of readiness of the promised Food Security Terminal and some kind of reasonable timeframe by which it will begin to serve the region, those Caribbean Heads of Government that have been charged with responding to what we have been told is a food security crisis in the region and those ‘lesser’ functionaries responsible for the execution of this most important project have exposed themselves to being accused of doing the region a disservice.

The recent disclosure that each government ministry will shortly be equipped with its own separate unit tasked with providing assessments of the various performances of contractors across the state sector comes in response to continuous concerns over instances of serious performance anomalies that have been both costly to taxpayers and inimical to ambitions associated with the timeliness of contract completion.

There exists at this time an uncanny coincidence between Guyana’s parading of itself as an oil-producing ‘rising star’ on the one hand and on the other, seemingly hurtling towards a return to that ‘zombie’ regimen of power outages that had once traumatized generations of Guyanese.

If it is altogether the right thing to ensure that the country’s health services are properly equipped to respond to what we anticipate to be the incremental demands on it in the period ahead, then the matter of how the issue of external recruitment into our health sector is gone about, including whether or not such recruitment should be undertaken without due consideration is also not a consideration that should be overlooked.

Back in February, 2022, an ‘Agency News’ release (February 21, 2022) that spoke for the Ministry of Agriculture gave an undertaking that “farmers, agro processors and exporters would have been linked to the most lucrative markets locally, regionally and internationally.”

Readers will recall that the Stabroek Business’ sustained appeal for disclosure on Guyana’s intended participation in the 2024 Barbados Agro Fest fell on deaf ears for a protracted period and that the first official public disclosure appeared in the print media on February 22nd, the day prior to the actual start of the event.

It has historically been the practice  for political administrations in Guyana and their high-profile functionaries to seize the advantage deriving from the generous measure of exposure afforded them mostly by the state-owned media to proffer undertakings which, from the standpoint of image enhancement usually satisfy their immediate objectives but which, all too frequently, do not, in the longer term, ‘hold up,’ so to speak. 

Now that Guyana has gotten the attention for reasons that have to do with matters that do not always, unerringly, target both our historical and our contemporary socio-political glitches, there is a case to be made for utilizing our now wide open window on the world, not just to expose the intrepid to the beauty of the country and to attract eagle-eyed investors here to ‘cash-in’ on the investment openings arising out of our petro state status but our condition must also play a role  in raising standards of living across the board.

Numerous calls by the Stabroek Business over the past several months for a progress report on the extent of the progress being made in the matter of the creation of the promised regional food security terminal have consistently fallen on deaf ears.

With the March 18-21 staging in Guyana of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) 38th Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean (LARC38), the point cannot be made too strongly that the forum should not be allowed to metamorphose into stirring speeches, animated ‘talk shops’ and a final communique that talks a great deal but says little, if anything.

Less than a decade after Guyana announced its first significant oil strike to the world in 2015, the country has become used to parading itself in the global petro spotlight, the knock-on effect of its credentials having a significant impact on various other aspects of its socio-economic behaviours.

It would not surprise us one bit if, in the wake of the promulgation of Guyana’s first trillion-dollar budget, rather than dwell more exhaustively on institutional allocations and how these can /will impact on the various sectors, we were to be criticized for continuing to anchor our editorial focus to the regional worry over matters to do with food security, particularly since there has been no definitive indication of any significant improvement in the status quo focus – particularly in the smaller, agriculturally weak countries in the region – over the past year and more.

A great deal of the state-orchestrated hype that followed the promulgation of the country’s maiden trillion-dollar budget had to do with the kind of messaging that the government wished to disseminate at the start of 2023.

The real significance of Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley’s presentation on Wednesday, January 10, regarding the role that his country will play in shoring up the region’s overall food security bona fides, going forward, is significant from two perspectives.

Later this year Guyana will host the 38th session of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Just under a year ago, a report in the state-run Guyana Chronicle of January 31, 2023 reported that the “Guyana/Barbados Food Terminal” (it is actually a Regional Food Terminal) was “taking shape.” 

The recent disclosure by the Caribbean Export Development Agency (CARIBEXPORT) that Guyana will host the 2024 Caribbean Investment Forum, the region’s single largest investment platform, sends a less than discreet message that the country’s long lockout from the ‘front lawn’ of the region, insofar as qualifications to host gatherings designed to (among other things ‘show off’ the Caribbean), could be approaching an end.

The resuscitation of GuyExpo last week following a hiatus of seven years was a commendable initiative given the fact that the optional avenues for product promotion for farm produce and their by-products have always been decidedly limited.

Over many weeks, the Stabroek Business has been commenting on matters pertaining to the seeming lack of concern on the part of regional governments, including our own, on an issue which is of paramount importance … food security.