Local Content and the ‘big players’ in the private sector

The prospects that could accrue to the local business sector arising out of the Local Content opportunities deriving from anticipated oil and gas-related foreign investor pursuits was one of the focal points of last Thursday’s address by Dr Ashni Singh at the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce’s 131st Awards Ceremony, unsurprisingly so, since Local Content and what it could mean for the fortunes of the Guyana business community has, for the most part, been uppermost on the agenda of our Business Support Organisations (BSOs).

One of the points made by Dr Singh had to do with the importance of local businesses being able to match the competence-related expectations of foreign investors, by no means a tangential point since one expects that outside investors coming here in search of investment opportunities deriving from the country’s oil and gas pursuits, will want to ensure that such local partners as they find are capable of contributing to the realisation of their goals.

Local content discourses between local business entities and potential business partners from abroad have already been ensuing and while it would have been a good thing if we were able to learn more about the progress of these discourses, one understands, of course, that it is not customary for such conversations to unfold in full public view.

We know, however, from what appears to be the current preoccupations of the PSC, particularly, that Local Content is high on the list of the priorities of its members, affiliated, variously, to the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association and the extent of whose intimacy allow for their individual leaders to alternately occupy the chairmanship of the PSC. It is the kind of inbreeding, some feel, that closes the door firmly against a singular strand of what might be called groupthink. Since it is manifestly fair to say that these are, in fact, ‘the leaders’ of the private sector then it is difficult to see how the vast majority of contemporary - and in many instances weak – small businesses can hope to exert any influence on private sector policy across the board.

So that while the private sector should enjoy, as a right, such local content access as they derive from the current external interest that Guyana enjoys as a potential investment target, we raise here, as we have previously raised, the question as to whether the manner in which our

BSOs are structured and the manner in which they function, properly position them to ensure that, across the board, the private sector can optimise the opportunities that repose in the Local Content opportunity. Here, of course, the point should be made that Local Content access cannot be reduced to a kind of ‘free-for-all’, since, in the final analysis, the assessment of the external partners will loom large in determining which potential partners ‘make the cut’ and which do not. This, however, is not the same thing as saying that as great a number of local businesses as possible, including small businesses, should not be afforded the opportunity to make that ‘cut’.

The past decade or so has seen the emergence of a number of smaller businesses in various sectors that might, conceivably, come into the picture insofar as local content opportunities are concerned. The question that arises here, however – and this was alluded to by Dr Singh in his GCCI address – has to do with the extent to which these relatively new enterprises, which now represent a significant portion of the wider private sector, meet, or hope to meet, in the near future, the standards which foreign investors will demand. If this is a practical question that cannot be swept aside, it is not the only pertinent one. What contribution, one might ask, has the mainstream BSOs made to competency enhancement in emerging businesses so that these too might, conceivably, in some sectors, benefit from a share (even a very modest share, in the circumstances would make a difference) of the Local Content pie?

Followers of the local private sector agenda would doubtless recall that some years ago the GCCI disclosed that it intended to initiate an initiative through the Chambers in other regions of the country in order to raise business operating standards in those regions. Nothing, as far as we recall, has been heard of that initiative since. Perhaps it may wish to say differently. Small businesses in Guyana remain weak for several reasons. One of them has to do with the limited business acumen of investors, instances in which zeal is not matched by the requisite acumen. There are other constraints too… like the posture of the lending sector towards startups and what often appears to be the indifference of the state towards the growth of small businesses. If there may have been (and there have been) sporadic efforts by some BSOs to undertake limited initiatives that reflect some measure of sensitivity to the need to support the growth of small businesses, there remains the entirely legitimate question as to whether these, on the whole, are designed to earnestly contribute to small business growth and capacity enhancement or whether they are merely tokenistic gestures. It is not desirable, for example, for BSOs like the GCCI and the GMSA to create small and vibrant business lobby groups within themselves whose voices can impact policy within the private sector as a whole? And can this not be done in a manner which ensures that even the ambitious street vendor has some kind of say and to which institutions like the state and banking sector will listen and respond?

Here again we believe that led by the Private Sector Commission, the BSOs will have to be seen mounting those kinds of lobbies and taking those kinds of initiatives. After all, as we had hinted earlier, it is not our understanding that possibilities for Local Content are completely closed off to that section of the business community which, for one reason or another, does not fall under the umbrella of one or another BSO whose members come from those private sector enterprises that enjoy the higher profile in the business community.