Business Editorial

The Stabroek Business has begun the year by drawing attention to two modest manufacturing entities that have set out to raise standards in a sector that has been performing sluggishly for several years.

On Saturday last the Stabroek News published a story about a group of potential investors from Trinidad and Tobago who had come to Guyana to scout local lands suitable for large-scale farming initiatives.

Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Khurshid Sattaur can take no credit for frankness in his letter published in last Monday’s issue of the Stabroek News in which he appears to concede that some of his own officers are guilty of corrupt practices for which they are generously rewarded.

On Friday August 22, 2008, this newspaper published a report based on a disclosure made by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) to the effect that it would be taking a tough line against business houses known or believed to be involved in the pedalling of illicit drugs and the marketing of counterfeit goods.

Even at the best of times, that is to say during periods when there is no excessive rainfall and no flooding, the status of Bourda Market (and other municipal markets) as a facility in which the business of conducting trade in items of food, including perishables, is highly questionable.

Director of the Food and Drugs Department Marlon Cole may have been short on details regarding what he told this newspaper was the planned creation of a new complex to house his department.

Two stories published in this issue of the Stabroek Business address the issue of buying local, albeit from different perspectives.

Earlier this week a sizeable group of Guyanese travelled to Florida to participate in an event that puts on display a range of fashion clothing, craft and agro-processed foods to promote Guyana and locally produced goods to the international community, more particularly in North America.

Deliberately, one suspects, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, in Guyana Khadija Musa last week took what some might see as an indelicate tilt at a section of the local fast food sector.

If Essequibo rice farmers are not even close to walking away from an industry that has served them well for decades, there are signs of an increasing awareness of some of the current uncertainties associated with the sector.

It has been almost two years since a delegation from Trinidad and Tobago headed by that country’s Food Production Minister Devant Maraj came to Guyana and held talks with local officials including Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy about an arrangement that would have seen large tracts of local lands being leased by Trinidad and Tobago farmers for the creation of mega farms, the produce from which was to have been shipped directly to the twin-island Republic.

There are some countries in the Caribbean that have responded seriously to the warning signs that have been sent by the United States about ensuring that the foods that it consumes – whether locally produced or imported – meet certain minimum standards.

Nothing would please this newspaper more than an outcome to this weekend’s Guyana Festival that realizes all of the ambitions of the organizers including those that have to do with showcasing and hopefully finding markets for indigenous food and craft products and having large numbers of Guyanese and visitors to the country enjoy a taste of what the tourism sector has to offer and, better yet, come back next year.

Everything that we have heard about next weekend’s Guyana Festival so far suggests that its primary focus is on trying to create an event that will serve as a kind of seasonal benchmark for visitor arrivals.

Our local craftspeople, including those from Amerindian communities will doubtless appear in their numbers at the upcoming Guyana Festival at the Providence Stadium and later in the year at GuyExpo at the Sophia Exhibition Site.

A week ago the Stabroek Business ran a front-page story that dealt with the issue of the proliferation of counterfeit consumer goods and drugs on the local market.

It is no secret that Guyana continues to have to deal with the considerable health and economic risks associated with the challenge of counterfeit consumer goods’ imports and our glaringly limited capacity to address the problem.

One gets the impression too that the environmental delinquency in the business sector is, to an overwhelming extent, a function of its awareness that whether through a lack of capacity or an absence of will, enforcement is largely ineffective.

Everything that we have heard about next weekend’s Guyana Festival so far suggests that its primary focus is on trying to create an event that will serve as a kind of seasonal benchmark for visitor arrivals.

Whenever it rains with any meaningful level of intensity, the city floods.