Talk shops

In the Friday July 20th issue of the Stabroek Business our lead story was based primarily on a brief telephone interview with the President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) during which he told us that a July 20-21 private sector forum at the Pegasus Hotel would have been seeking to move in a positive direction as far as the growth of the businesses participating in the forum were concerned. “This will definitely not be a talk shop,” is what Mr Deodat Indar told this newspaper. That was two weeks ago.

Frankly, we felt relieved that Mr Indar went to the trouble to make that particular point. There is a certain repetitiveness to these fora where attendees sit through what, sometimes (not always, but sometimes) are unattractive presentations, ask a handful of routine questions and after what, customarily. Is a satisfying lunch, take themselves off to their other pursuits, leaving that particular part of the day behind them.

Making allowances for the fact that post-event follow-up must allow time for documented decisions to be thought through in terms of putting mechanisms in place to take the necessary follow-up action, we are prepared to allow for the likelihood that we can still take Mr Indar at his word and that at some stage, hopefully sooner rather than later, the outcomes of the aforementioned forum as far as follow up is concerned will materialize. If not, what would have been the use of the forum in the first place?

Except of course that the track record of these seminars and conferences whether they be staged jointly by the public and private sectors or by either of the two, individually, does not fill us with a great deal of optimism that this time there will, after all, be some meaningful feedback. Here again, it is our fervent hope that we are dead wrong.

Other sections of the media may well remember the frustration associated with trying to get GO-Invest to provide detailed and cohesive public accounts of the outcomes of successive GuyExpos which information – providing the event is carefully monitored and outcomes logged can be documented in a short space of time. Indeed, the failure of GO-Invest to deliver informative and detailed reports on GuyExpo, year in, year out, had actually led this newspaper to believe that it was a deliberate ruse intended to avoid having to answer for the shortcomings of the event.

It is, frankly, no better with the private sector where the multitude of fora that are held by one or another (sometimes in collaboration with the public sector) on issues ranging from small business development to entrepreneurial training have yielded no follow-up as far as we are aware. Here, we hasten to make the point that the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) particularly, periodically makes itself available, at the level of its senior executive members to brief this newspaper on public the mentoring of those fledgling establishments.

And in order to provide direct support for the local agro processing sector the GMSA says it wants government agencies themselves to preferentially source items from local agro processors once these products are available and of the requisite quality. In support of this development the GMSA wants government to hasten the implementation in the Small Business Act that enables the allocation of 20% of government acquisitions to the small business sector.

Meanwhile, the GMSA has also tagged the speeding of efforts towards the enactment of a Food Safety Bill as critical to the acceleration of growth in the agro-processing sector. However, it says that movement towards enactment of legislation must be preceded by further stakeholder consultation prior to passage in the National Assembly.

Also on the agenda for the ongoing talks are the creation

events, the most recent one being the ongoing roundtable with government on issues affecting the manufacturing sector.

This newspaper recalls that the public sector was far from forthcoming in its handling of information dissemination relating to the May 2017 visit to Brazil by a team of local trade and investment officials to which a considerable amount of importance would have been attached. We were told by the Department of Public Information that the Brazilian officials with whom our delegation met were keen to invest in Guyana though we were unable to secure a positive response to our request to speak directly with GOInvest on the visit and its outcomes.

At the levels of both the media and the public it is of a national policy for agriculture and agro-processing which the GMSA says will provide a greater measure of clarity on the direction, priorities and incentives on offer to the agro-processing sector by government.

Other issues which the GMSA says are being pursued as part of the roundtable agenda are the establishment of a facility for small processors that will enable the proper packaging of their agro-processed products.

Meanwhile, the GMSA says that state-run agencies have key roles to play in the overall process. The GMSA is calling for the urgent institutional strengthening of the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department (GAFDD) and is urging that the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) develop further standards. Meanwhile, the private sector body wants the Guyana Revenue Authority to expedite and simplify the clearance of goods including the use of electronic entries and wants the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest) to provide a “greater push” in support of agro- processing through more “hand-holding.”

important that we are able to measure the extent of the effort made by representatives of both the public and private sectors – whether these be by way of overseas trade missions or local fora of one sort or another to place matters to do with business and the economy on a sound footing. Where these events take place, functionaries should be assigned to prepare cogent, thoughtful and informed reports (lengthy dissertations are hardly necessary in these situations) that can serve both to help brief the media as well as to document the agreed decisions with a view to ensuring that they are implemented. Otherwise there is no purpose to expending time and resources on these pursuits.