Latest update January 18th, 2025 5:02 AM
The Story within the Story…Marketing our country and its products
By Leonard Gildarie
I have wondering over the years about the role of our overseas representatives and whether
Leonard Gildarie
Guyana should not have looked at the possibilities of expanding their role.
We can take a look at what prevails locally and learn a little.
Last year, Canadian-owned Guyana Goldfields started operations. It was a grueling number of years for that company to reach where it is today…a big player in Guyana in the gold industry…so much so that the country is depending this year on it to contribute well over 100,000 ounces.
Throughout the journey by that company in the startup, officials from the Canadian High Commissioner were foot-to-foot with the principals. The bureaucracy and other hurdles, including environmental ones, were many.
Some of concessions granted to the company, I am sure, are in no small way because of the input of the offices of the High Commission here.
We see the role being played by the Chinese Embassy here in the many projects that China has ongoing throughout the country, including the Timehri airport expansion and the East Coast Demerara road project.
The embassy’s input is critical. China, understandably, is aggressively spreading its wings throughout the world and pulling out stops for its companies and businesses to gain a foothold in the natural resources sector and especially in commerce.
The United States is here and one of its major companies, ExxonMobil, has found oil in Guyana’s waters. It appears that the find is significant and Guyana is poised to become an oil player in a few years. It is natural that the US would want to ensure that its company is protected, even in face of aggression by neighbouring Venezuela.
The point is that the representation by these embassies indicates the critical role played by staffers.
We have had officers stationed in key overseas territories, some for years, but how effective they were, I don’t know. And that is the problem. We knew little of what they did except maybe facilitate a loan or grant for a project here or there.
I know that the embassies and High Commissions play a role in helping Guyanese renew their passports and apply for birth certificates. I say it is time we move beyond that.
Guyana is boasting of so many things. We are now aggressively pushing tourism. We have fresh foods. We have lumber, beautiful furniture and so many other things.
I am not saying that the embassies and High Commissions are not playing any role.
It is just that we do not know or hear much.
I am humbly suggesting just like how there is a commercial section in the embassies here in Guyana, we could move to expand how we do business with ours.
We need our local exporters to have access. We need to be able with a phone call to ask our embassies to check for sources of financing for our projects or to help us find markets.
We reportedly have over 300,000 Guyanese living in the U.S. Many of them want to return. Little St. Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles has more than 5,000. Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Antigua and Barbados also consist of significant numbers.
Many of them love their Guyanese food. They want the Hassar and Bora and Pepper.
Yes, our exporters have been doing a good job in taking it to Queens, New York.
But we have so much more. Farmers are dumping a significant part of their harvests annually because of a lack of market.
Our tourism should not be concentrating too much on Europe and the “rich white folks”.
We have too many Guyanese in the diaspora that we can tap into.
The big challenge is getting cheaper flights to Guyana.
Instead of depending on the tourism office to have a booth here and there at some show or the other, our local policy makers should move beyond lip service.
Again, I am not sure whether our embassies and High Commissions have moved to this stage. We just don’t know. We should know.
We are in an age where communication is easy. International calls via Skype or even Whatsapp have made things so much easier. It is time to utilize all our resources in a more meaningful way.
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