-will press for fair allocation from sector for county’s development
Advocating for the allocation of a “fair share” of the returns from the country’s oil and gas industry, bringing the Essequibo Chamber of Commerce (ECC) into the national business mainstream and aggressively promoting the ‘Cinderella County’ as a hotspot for tourism are among the key priorities of Region Two businessman Roopan Ramotar who, last Sunday, was elected Chairman of the (ECC).
Having agreed to grant the Stabroek Business his first interview to share his initial thoughts on the likely direction of what has been a largely dormant Essequibo Chamber, Ramotar told this newspaper that he believed that his experience of and involvement in various key sections of the country’s economy including logging, mining, agriculture and agroprocessing, as an investor, has equipped him to help develop a template for raising the profile of Region Two as a centre for enterprise in Guyana. And the new Essequibo Chamber President told this newspaper that in order to kick-start that process he intends, shortly, to convene a meeting of representatives of the key state and private sector entities in the Region with a view to fashioning an agenda that will have as its key mission creating a direction for the business support organization. “From my experience it is not just the private sector that is needed to create a plan for business,” Ramotar told Stabroek Business.
Beyond the business community, Ramotar said that he will also be inviting representatives of law enforcement, the local authority and the various other organizations who, “for different important reasons,” all have some role to play in strengthening the Essequibo Chamber and by extension the business sector in the region.
And asserting that raising the profile of business in Essequibo has to materialize out of a national effort, Ramotar said that he will shortly be extending an invitation to key players from the business sector as a whole, including representatives of the Georgetown-based Business Support Organizations, including the Private Sector Commission to travel to Essequibo with a view to “putting heads together” to develop a strategy for maximizing the business potential of the region. He said that the issues that will be ventilated at that forum will include the development of strategies for maximizing the economic potential of Essequibo through business initiatives that will include infrastructure development, tourism and agro processing.
Currently one of Essequibo’s leading coconut farmers and exporters, Ramotar attracted local media headlines last year following the refusal by the authorities in Trinidad and Tobago to have his coconut water marketed there, a development that provoked a sharp and assertive response from sections of the local business community. Trinidad and Tobago’s rejection of the local coconut water sparked a generous measure of verbal protest here on the back of the insistence by the Government Analyst-Food & Drugs Department (GAFDD) that Ramotar’s coconut water had met all of the health-related requirements to be imported into Trinidad and Tobago and sold there. The food safety authorities in Jamaica had also concurred with that assessment.
Earlier this week, in reflecting on the issue Ramotar said that it was ironic that his coconut water was currently being sold in Trinidad and Tobago under a local (T&T) brand.
Asked about how the coconut industry in Region Two was faring, Ramotar said that he believed that there was a good future for the coconut industry ahead. He said that his own coconut groves “cannot produce fast enough” to supply the available markets. “We are presently supplying a few Guyanese exporters that ship to New York and Florida. We are also in Dominica and Antigua and will shortly be working with markets in other Caribbean territories.”
Still seemingly piqued by what he insists was a blatant protectionist measure by Port of Spain to hurt a Guyana export market, Ramotar told Stabroek Business that he considered it an irony that the