Georgetown: The Coalition Government is aiming to place more focus on business opportunities which can be provided to stakeholders participating in this year’s GuyExpo which is slated to take place from May 12-15.
Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin said, the intention is to have a stronger bias towards promoting and enabling the business owners and operators to take advantage of the event. There will be emphasis on celebrating Guyana’s Jubilee Independence, anniversary, as well, as the theme of the event is ‘50 years: Guyana means business, promoting enterprise, driving productivity’.
“The fact that we anticipate a lot of overseas visitors coming to Guyana, we want to put on something that is special for them,” Minister Gaskin told the Government Information Agency on Friday.
For the Minister, the challenge is attracting large numbers of people to the event without focusing mostly on the entertainment which often detracts from actual exhibits. “We’ll have a bit of balance,” he promised.
The Business Ministry has organised a number of workshops and business oriented events during the staging of GuyExpo. “There is going to be a serious focus on business development and establishing linkages,” he asserted. He added that members of the diaspora are very interested in doing business with local counterparts.
The Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest), the agency charged with boosting local and foreign investments, will have a stronger presence at GuyExpo. “They will be able to give advice and information to businesses, the kind of information that is often lacking, or hard for people to get, on their own, to provide the kind of information to help them make good business decisions -what to invest in, where to invest, what are some of the opportunities and what are the areas for investment based on their skill set.”
He noted that a lot of investors may have a particular skill set and the Government would want potential investors to invest in what they know best.
The Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) will also have a larger role at the event. The agency, Minister Gaskin observed, has taken on the role on being a consumer watchdog, but this is not its main focus. The primary role of the GNBS, he said, is to support business development by creating standards for implementation, “thereby improving the quality of their businesses and services, and therefore becoming more competitive…we want them to exhibit and demonstrate that role at this year’s GuyExpo,” he emphasised.
Also making its presence felt at the event will be the Small Business Bureau (SBB), Minister Gaskin said. The bureau will be providing information to small businesses that want to know about the programmes and opportunities it has available.
The Business Ministry is aiming to have approximately hundreds of exhibitors at this year’s event. The GuyExpo Organising Committee, according to Minister Gaskin has been receiving many applications from persons and businesses keen to participate. “They are busy. There has been a lot of interest. We are also seeing a large level of interest from our main sponsors, the corporate entities without whose sponsorship, there really would be no GuyExpo. There is also a lot of interest from others in the business community.”
There is a lot of work to be done for the event, Minister Gaskin noted, and reiterated, “We still have to achieve that balance, making it attractive for visitors to come in while maintaining that serious business focus that we want it to be known for going forward.”
At the launch of GuyExpo earlier this month, Minister Gaskin has stated that the event is “well aligned with the objectives of the Ministry of Business, as well as the economic development priorities of the government, and is designed to nurture and promote business growth and development.”
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