Business Editorial

The Stabroek Business’ decision to return to the theme of what we believe has been an inexplicable delay in providing an update on the pace of progress towards the establishment of the promised Regional Food Terminal is driven, primarily, by two factors.

Guyana’s agro processing sector is favourably positioned to step up way above where it is at this time.

With due respect to what, these days, appears to be a preference in the Caribbean for endless ‘sit downs’ on the issue of regional food security, the point where the outcomes of these fora goes nowhere has long been reached.

One of the ‘marketing promos’ for the October 9-13 Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) promises “a week of amazing activities and events,” a promotional ‘line’ that gives reason to remind the organizers that the event is not (as far as this newspaper is aware) intended to be a ‘theatre affair.’ 

After he had made an undisguised ‘pitch’ on Thursday, August 3, at the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) Dinner and Awards Ceremony for the GMSA to engage government on the issue of the private sector body interfacing with the state-run Small Business Bureau (SBB), GMSA President, Ramsay Ali, had told the Stabroek Business that there had been an expectation that such a meeting was likely to have taken place “in two weeks’ time.”

It was only towards the end of 2021 that the bald facts of what we now know to be the paucity of the Caribbean’s overall food security bona fides were known. 

It would be altogether fair to say that this year, Caribbean Agriculture Week (CAW) which is being staged in The Bahamas from October 9th – 13th, ought to be, for obvious reasons, one of the more important regional gatherings of any kind to have been staged in recent years.

Arguably the most worthwhile takeaway from the recent visit by the President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) President, Kester Hutson, to India to attend the August 3-4 Ninth CII India-Latin America and the Caribbean Conclave under the theme ‘Furthering Economic Partnerships for Shared & Sustained Growth’ was the profusion of ideas which the visit yielded for the shape of Guyana’s economic diplomacy, going forward.

Arguably the standout feature of the micro and small business sector in Guyana today is the energy and vibrancy which women, notably younger women, are bringing to the sector and what, in many instances, are the rewards which they are reaping on account of the grit and determination and certainly the ingenuity and creativity that they have brought to the sector.

The Stabroek Business’ views on the ‘hands on,’ operating role which the state plays in entities set up for advancing the interests of the business sector are well-known.

It is not so much last Saturday’s signing of a ‘Declaration to foster social and economic development’ between the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and the United Nations, as it is the actualization of the tenets of the Declaration that will help to provide a real assessment of the extent of the accomplishment of the Chamber-organized Small Business Week.

Georgetown is sinking ever deeper into a cesspool of filth, squalor and smelliness.

Here we go again! Caribbean Ministers of Agriculture were due to gather in Costa Rica on Tuesday to discuss what the San Jose-based Inter American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) said are deliberations designed to discuss means through which food insecurity can be reduced and bridges built between Latin America and the Caribbean.

For all the measures put in place by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to roll back the tide of food insecurity following the United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP) revelation late last year that 4.1 million people (or 57 percent of the region’s population) were facing food insecurity, concerns persist that the region is still some distance from being out of the woods on the issue.

One of the things that the emergence of the oil and gas sector appears to have done for Guyana is to trigger an upgraded interest in entrepreneurship of one kind or another.

It would be to the government’s considerable credit if it can deliver the promised thirteen  Agro-processing facilities to farmers across the country within a reasonable timeframe. 

Successive political administrations here in Guyana have, as part of a long ingrained governance culture, embraced a propensity to exaggerate and, not infrequently, to mislead their domestic audience.

It will doubtless be recalled that the disclosure by ExxonMobil that the long-held belief that large deposits of oil lay within Guyana’s maritime jurisdiction was indeed true, created an unbridled furore here in Guyana.

One of the stories appearing in this issue of the Stabroek Business has to do with the strides that Jamaica has made over the years in the agro-processing sector, particularly as it relates to the country’s marked success in having its products realise an impressive level of market acceptance in the United States and parts of Europe among other places.

Given what we were told just a matter of months ago was the perilous state in which some countries in the region found themselves, this newspaper has made the point regarding the need for there to be a periodic region-wide up-date on the pace of progress towards the operationalization of the Regional Food Terminal.