FROM INDUSTRIAL TO COMMERCIAL

Feb 08, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The first sign of a crisis in an economy is when industrial output begins to decline. We have not reached that stage as yet, but we should still be concerned about the slow but definite transformation that is taking place in some of our industrial estates.
Industrial sites should not be used for commercial businesses. When those sites were created they were for the specific purpose of industrial development that is the production of goods, not for the sale of goods as is happening now in so many industrial estates in Guyana.
Drive into any industrial estate and you will find a mixture of both industrial and commercial activity taking place. There is nothing wrong with a manufacturing entity using its space to also offer what it is producing for sale, but ideally industrial estates, for a variety of reasons, should be off limits for such activity.
They should be only about manufacturing, with the distribution aspects taking place elsewhere.
There are sufficient commercial properties in Guyana for those businesses from which retailers and wholesalers can operate. In fact the situation is now so problematic that even in traditional residential areas, businesses are being established.
It is almost impossible today to distinguish between what is a commercial area and what is a residential area. Unless you are living in one of these high-end neighbourhoods such as Pradoville you cannot be sure that one day you will not awake and find your neighbour opening some beer garden which will cause you sleepless nights.
Zoning has gone through the window in Guyana, cast away like some of the bags that are usually cast out from the moving windows of motor vehicles, the disposer unconcerned about the country’s environmental laws or his own lack of decorum in disposing of his waste publicly.
But this is no reason why zoning should not be rigorously enforced in industrial estates which have until recently in Guyana been about manufacturing and not about the sale of goods and services.
The latest news is that the building that formerly houses the printery of the Mirror newspaper has been sold and will be converted into a depot. This simply means that there will be no manufacturing taking place at that location situated in an industrial site which was built by the PPP specifically to promote the manufacturing sector. But that entity will not be the only one that is engaging in commercial activities at that industrial site. There are others as there are others also in other industrial sites.
The state of our industrial sites needs to be examined. A few years ago there were great plans for a site at Coldingen which could have created hundreds of jobs for unemployed persons in the country. The crime wave emanating from Buxton put paid to whatever ambitions the Coldingen estate had about becoming a major production area.
That industrial estate is now virtually a ghost town with very few businesses operating. With manufacturing in Guyana on the decline, uses have to be found for industrial properties, and one can understand why certain industrial properties have to be sold and why the new owners are more inclined to engage in commercial ventures.
That the owners of the Mirror decided to sell their property shows how troubled the manufacturing sector is in Guyana. A few large companies doing well may well be masking the deep problems of manufacturers in Guyana.
For a long time, we have heard about Guyana’s potential to engage in manufacturing. We have even heard about plans to push agro industry.
Well with limited industrial estates, it is hard to see how this goal can be achieved when industrial spots are being converted to commercial uses.
Yet when you go into the supermarket, you see so much foreign food on display, including canned items. Imagine how much savings in foreign exchange will result if we can reduce the importance of so much of those tinned items which adorn the shelves of supermarkets and departmental stores. Imagine if instead of certain foreign brands of milk powder and other canned food, we could have had local substitutes.
Any country which does not have a manufacturing base is going to eventually run into serious problems. This is why what is needed is a serious evaluation of Guyana’s future manufacturing prospects so that the appropriate lands can be dedicated to industrial production and avoid the ongoing situation whereby commercial businesses are springing up in industrial estates.

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