Business Editorial

It would have been more than a little reassuring if the recent remark attributed to Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha regarding what he sees as the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) readiness for investments in the agriculture sector could have been accepted as a given.

It is entirely unsurprising that a good deal of official media-driven hype and hoopla surrounds the three-day May 19-21  Agri Investment Forum and Expo, the current ‘selling point’ being that a number of Caribbean Community Heads will be travelling to Georgetown for the event.

Up to this time we are yet to make a proper assessment of the extent of the impact which the Coronavirus has had on micro and small businesses in the farming and agro-processing sectors.

Having just a few months ago undertaken a working visit to Region Nine where we conducted extensive interviews with businessmen and women from various economic sectors and with other sections of the community, the Stabroek Business was able to secure an enhanced understanding of the circumstances of the region, including its economic potential and some of the challenges that continue to suppress economic growth in the region.

There can be no question that the advent of an oil and gas sector and the attendant international attention that it has brought Guyana has dramatically opened up the country to external interest that is attended mostly by upbeat assessments of its investment potential.

The announcement last week that Guyana will host the 38th FAO Regional Conference in 2024 is probably unsurprising, given, first, the country’s longstanding pre-eminent position in the region as a food-producing nation and secondly, the increasing attention that we now attract, internationally, on account of our new-found oil & gas wealth.

The fact that the announcement earlier this month that Barbados will be working with Guyana in a bilateral effort to enhance the Caribbean island’s food security situation attracted minimal public comment across the region was hardly surprising given the outcomes of previous attempts at the level of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states to seek to improve the Caribbean’s   overall position.

Watching the comings and goings of potential investors, all reacting to the opportunities opened up by the country’s ‘oil bonanza’ and their interaction with Guyanese Local Content aspirants offers some interesting insights into the direction in which this country’s development trajectory might be heading.

Back in 2015, it had taken little or no time after ExxonMobil’s first oil disclosure for public reactions to materialise.

With several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries now having openly admitted that the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will impact – to an extent that is still unclear – on the food security of the region, the question arises once again as to whether the region, as a whole, does not continue to ‘play monopoly’ with its food security to an extent that seriously threatens to retard its development, pushing us even further behind much of the rest of the international community than we are at this time.

One of the predictable developments that appears to have derived from the recently concluded Thirty-Third Inter-Sessional Meeting of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was the official ‘anointing’ of President Irfaan Ali as the ‘lead’ CARICOM Head on the issue of regional food security.

Back in November last year the government announced that it had created a “working committee” to address the issue of putting in place arrangements for the training of Guyanese in tourism–related disciplines.

If it would be churlish not to acknowledge the limited exposure afforded small businesses in the agro-processing, food processing, art and craft and other sub-sectors that fall under the umbrella of what are loosely termed micro and small businesses, it would also be misleading to provide a sort of one-swallow-makes-a-summer assessment to the one-off Duty Free Shop staged at the Umana Yana to coincide with the high-profile 2022 International Energy Conference and Expo now winding down at the Marriott Hotel.

Against the backdrop of numerous un-kept promises by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government, over several decades, to seriously ‘put heads together’ to find ways of reducing the volumes of our extra-regional food imports, the region continues to witness a continual climb in its food import bill.

We in Guyana would know by now that the oil and gas industry, like so many other phenomenon, can be a mixed blessing, even though, as a country, we are still well adrift of an accumulation of knowledge sufficient to understand all of the quirks of what can be a profound and multi-faceted transformative experience for countries possessed of the resources in question..

Quite unlike in some other countries in the region there does not exist in Guyana any organization, state-run or otherwise, that is singularly and demonstrably dedicated to the development of a robust micro and small business sector, these being the sectors with by far the largest numbers of full-time entrepreneurs.

From everything that this newspaper has been able to learn about the recent fire at the Laparkan Lombard Street wharf, a very senior state agency official has apparently gone on record as saying that at the time of the fire highly flammable chemicals were being stored in the bond where, apparently, the fire started.

It is by no means the most uplifting of pursuits to zero in on every seemingly well-intentioned initiative undertaken by government and to shovel criticisms at those without seeking, first, to probe their virtues without passing verdict, one way or another.

For all the ‘notable achievements’ of the country’s tourism industry recorded in 2021 as outlined by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) in its yearend review, there can still be no disputing the fact that insofar as the national ambition of developing the key sectors of the country’s economy is concerned, the ‘tourism industry’ occupies a less than prominent position on the ‘food chain’.

The recent outburst of fretfulness by the World Bank over what it says is the problem of governments seeking to “unfairly determine the winners of government contracts, with awards favouring friends, relatives, or business associates of government officials” (and which is reported in this issue of the Stabroek Business), came shortly before a revelation emanating from the Office of the Auditor General here in Guyana regarding a particularly outrageous instance of seeming manipulation of the state tender process in a manner that appeared to bend over backwards in favour of an un-named contractor.