The “Roop” Economic Corner…The today – need for technology infusion

Aug 20, 2008 Features / Columnists

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Peter R. Ramsaroop, MBA

INTRODUCTION:

Businesses today are more complex than ever.  Many different issues and challenges face employees and business owners alike – from catastrophic natural events, to globalization, to the impacts of global terrorism. These challenges often overwhelm the individual and the company looking to compete for a piece of the pie.
In Guyana, we continue to struggle to adapt in the face of complexity and often it seems that we are more interested in the struggle than in working together to build what I think as, as our today much less our future.

TECHNOLOGY:

For the last twenty years I’ve worked to build technology solutions for companies and governments around the world.  Technology has in many ways proven to be the great equalizer among nations and economies yet we still have not harnessed its capabilities in our land.   While one can readily check and send email at numerous cafes around Guyana, the potential of technology reaches much farther than email – consider the web-enabled marketplace for agricultural commodities or a records management solution that could assist our ailing property registry system.
It is not about drainage alone, we should also be concentrating on improving technology in the field of agriculture.  We have to concentrate on using technology to enhance our production, manage our inventories and communicate with the distributors and buyers.
One of the latest technologies we are introducing to Caricom is where each of us can be notified either via our land lines or cell phones in a case of a disaster or other life-threatening events such as a break in the Seawall.
In every economy, the core technology becomes the basis for revitalisation and growth.  Information technologies are the core for today’s economy, and to survive all businesses must informationalise or create knowledge assets.   From small family stores to larger corporations, the point is to grasp that all economic activities will depend on information and knowledge to create and control value.

ECONOMIC SOLUTION VERSUS POLITICAL:

Technical solutions work better when people work together.  Over the last ten years I’ve noted that it seems we Guyanese prefer the political system to achieve economic ends rather than build economic interests that succeed on their own merit.  The destructive nature of this tendency is in my view not rooted in our culture but rather is a result of the misuse of the political system. Guyanese of all races succeed in free markets from Europe to North America, yet at home the working masses are continually frustrated in their pursuit of prosperity.

FREE MARKETS:

I believe in free markets and the power of the market to affect change for the good of all our countrymen.  Yet very little evidence of free markets exists in our land.  From the lack of an encouraging investment code, to the immaturity of our own financial institutions, to the heavily interventionist hand of the public sector, the private sector is often the poor stepchild of our social system.   The nature of a government-driven economy often results in political and economic divisiveness based on race or ethnicity, or in some cases religious discrimination.

Renowned economist, Dwight Lee noted in an International Institute for Economic Research Paper that misuse of the political system can “degenerate easily into a malicious exercise in which the major preoccupation becomes that of inflicting harm and ridicule on the enemy.”
Sound a little like our normal political discourse?

SUGGESTIONS:

How can we connect to the today much less the future?  It has been fascinating to me that acquiring land is such a difficult process in our nation, perhaps we can start by creating our own land rush through a public process to encourage property ownership to the broadest possible cross-section of Guyanese and then allow an open property market to allow individuals to actively buy and sell their parcels?

Perhaps we also can create opportunity through tax reduction on export duties on key products and tariffs on imports that affect our national products that place many of our economic interests at a competitive disadvantage?

These changes would mean a significant “power to the people” shift that is in accord with the march of freedom we’re witnessing even in the most intractable trouble spots of our global community.

Lee also speaks to the effects of such a shift:

Market exchange establishes a positive-sum environment that not only allows mutual gains, but rewards those who expand the scope of cooperative interaction by increasing the opportunities to realize these gains…When zero-sum political plunder replaces positive-sum market exchange, the stage is set for malice in plunderland.

CONCLUSION:

We’re at a crucial time in our history in Guyana.  Much can be done now to build our today and our future where we work together to create that positive-sum market economy.  We must create a new image of our nation to make it an attractive destination for foreign capital and demonstrating to an international audience the opportunities available for investment.  Our public and private sector leaders must seek to define how global political and economic trends affect development, government, finance, investment and trade in our nation.  Let’s start now to work together in a civil society initiative to build connections for the future prosperity of our nation.

Send your comments and suggestions to [email protected] and/or www.visionguyana.com

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