GuyExpo is a fairground

Sep 29, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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If there are any doubts about the potential for success of the cinema industry and for a sprawling and spacious shopping mall in Guyana, then GuyExpo will remove such doubts.
If you have been to one GuyExpo you have been to all. There is nothing much new to see. True, some products will change, different exhibitors would come on stream, but a soda that comes in different flavours is still a soda, and GuyExpo is simply a soda repackaged each year.
GuyExpo is one big fairground. Hundreds of thousands will pass through the gates by the time the exposition is finished. The real attraction is not the private sector goods on display, but rather the opportunity that GuyExpo presents as an outdoor form of entertainment suited for the whole family – as a grand meeting place for thousands of Guyanese to simply go out and hang out.
Throw in some popular musical bands and you will not have space for the thousands that will crowd the exhibition site. Make the event free and mayhem will break loose. There simply would be no space left to hold the crowds that would go.
Guyanese need entertainment and GuyExpo provides this. For this reason the return of the cinema to Guyana will be a big hit. People will swarm the soon- to-be-established movie houses, because Guyanese are starved of family-styled and wholesome entertainment.
GuyExpo also offers the opportunity for some politicians to impress themselves, because they surely are not impressing anyone else with their clichés and verbal histrionics.
The politicians will try as we would say in Guyana to “big up”  the private sector. But this private sector that we have in Guyana is only “big” because of the government. Without the support of government, the private sector would crash on its face. It would be an infant, creeping on its knees.
In the difficult days of Guyana, the private sector chose to put its tail between its legs. It survived using all manner of disingenuous means. It engaged in massive capital flight to the extent that today many private sector business persons have significant assets overseas.
Private sector businesses are being encouraged to invest in Guyana, but many of them have already sunk their investments in North America and Europe, and many are still shipping out their profits and purchasing villas and other real estate in foreign capitals.
There are some rich people in Guyana who can live here without experiencing what the average Guyanese experience. They have their own water supply. Blackout, which admittedly is infrequent for many years now, is not going to be a problem for them because they have massive standby generators. They also employ private security. Their food is either shipped in or flown in, and when they want entertainment, they simply fly out to New York, London or Bridgetown as if they were taking a stroll around the block.
When it comes to strolling in Guyana, however, these super-rich persons are not going to be seen walking along one of our avenues. Such is the life of the rich in Guyana that they can live an almost independent existence. And please do not believe that they come only from the business class. There are some politicians who also live the gilded life, basking by the poolside in their mansions or simply sailing on their boats to secluded resorts. The average man would never know that there are hundreds of Guyanese who live what the poor can only dream about.
If the poor man is going to have his day in the sun, it is not going to be as a result of the private sector. The private sector may be the engine of growth, but not only is the government the lubricating oil for the engine, the government is often the one that is also helping to subsidize the fuel that drives the engine. Take away the government from the economy of Guyana and it is going to collapse.
The government, itself, indirectly admits to this fact. During the corruption debates, one of the government representatives in defending government’s participation in financing the proposed Marriott Hotel said that one of the reasons for government injecting equity into the project was because the local private sector was not capable of raising the financing for a project of this size.
Well if they cannot come up with US$60M for a hotel, then they would also not be able to come up with US$ 200M for the Skeldon Sugar Factory. Based on these facts alone, the price tag of US$840M for the hydroelectric plant would be clearly outside of the reach of the local private sector.
So how then is this feeble private sector going to become the engine of economic growth? What growth? Their own growth, perhaps, but certainly not that of the country!
Guyana, one of the smallest and more underdeveloped countries in South America, is too big for the local private sector.

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