Rocessing sector

seize upon these situations to provide adequate support for these businesses, failing miserably to recognize that such gestures can, incrementally, serve to open a floodgate to significant market-related accomplishments for the sector as a whole.

The limitations that have resulted in lost external market opportunities for local agro-produce and by extension for the growth of those enterprises has derived largely from a lack of state support for those enterprises. Growing our agro-processing enterprises into world class businesses cannot be accomplished by the strictly limited support afforded them through institutions like the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) and the Small Business Bureau. These, in themselves, are limited in both their capacity and their resources. At a time when the emergence of the oil and gas sector will inevitably attract significantly greater enhanced attention to the country’s economic sectors, as a whole, it is government that needs to ‘step up’ in terms of providing resources that allow the sector to grow.