Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 14, 2010 News
– Senior Economist
Fair competition is one of the core characteristics of a healthy business sector. It keeps the playing field level, prevents monopolies and forces businesses to court their customers with continuously improving products and services.
The executives of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) apparently share the same sentiments. The GCCI usually offers a presentation of topical interest to its members every year at their annual business dinner. This year was no different as they called on the National Competitiveness Strategy Unit to deliver the feature address on Friday last at Le Meridien.
Initially the Unit’s Director, Dr. Cecil Rajana, was slated to be the presenter for the evening but unforeseen circumstances dictated a change in speaker. The feature address was therefore delivered by Senior Economist with the National Competitiveness Strategy Unit (NCSU), Mr. Jonathan Said.
The address focused on the impact of the Strategy on the local business sector. He began his presentation with an overview of the Strategy. The Strategy which was published in 2006 is a conversion of the National Development Strategy into an action plan. It presents a long term economic developmental path for the country with a special emphasis on promoting fair competition in the business sector. The mechanism for instituting and continually carrying most of these changes will be public-private partnerships between Government and the Private Sector.
From a policy perspective, the Strategy is built around three sets of policies. These include the Core Competitiveness Policies, the Sector Strategies and the Strategic Sub Sector Policies.
The Core Policies are measures which can be effectively applied across the board, in most or all of the key economic sectors. There are two types of these core policies – incentive (or demand side) and supply side policies.
Sector policies on the other hand are those which address the obstacles and opportunities characteristic to each sector. And the Strategic Sub Sector Policies are those that cover the areas of greatest potential growth, these areas present the best opportunities for diversification of the economy with maximum gain and will allow for investment in growth that will in turn allow for concentration of resources and effort as opposed to spreading them too thinly over too many areas.
Said then explained the means by which the strategy will provide its deliverables. Starting from the application of the policies outlined above, the process is strengthened by policy inputs from other areas. These include policies such as the Sugar Action Plan, the Five- Year Tourism Plan, and the E-Commerce Strategy. Studies such as the Transport Sector Study, the Financial Sector Assessment Programme and the Investment Climate Assessment are also part of the feed into the policy structure. The next step involves funding by Tax Payer Funded Programmes as well as Donor Funded Programmes. The Donor Programmes are numerous and include programmes such as the Support Competitiveness Programme and Commercial Courts Programme both funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Guyana Trade and Investment Support Programme, which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
In terms of the Public-Private partnerships, Said pointed out that there were two tiers to the Partnership Framework. The higher tier was that of the National Competitiveness Council which includes the President, key Ministers and agency heads as well as leaders in the private sector and organised labour movements. According to Said, the mandate of this council is to “oversee and guide the implementation of the Strategy”.
The base level of the partnership pyramid includes a number of groups whose activities have a significant impact on the key areas covered by the strategy. This tier includes groups such as Small Business Council, Energy Strategy Group, Working Group on Business Closure and an Export and Investment Promotion Council.
Said went on to highlight areas of the Strategy where significant progress has been made thus far. He pointed out ongoing IT development at the Guyana Revenue Authority and Deeds Registry as well as a restructuring exercise that was carried out at GRA. Other indicators of progress he said were the completion of “key infrastructure projects” as well as enactment of a number of pertinent pieces of legislation such as the Small Business Act of 2004.
Explaining to GCCI members where the input of the business community would be needed, Said highlighted areas such as certification and standards as well as corporate governance along with procedural reviews of certain necessary business processes that tend to restrict the flow of commerce as a result of antiquated methodologies. He also stressed the need for increased contribution on the part of the Private Sector to National Competitiveness Strategy Dialogue.
Said closed his presentation with a call to the Business community for their increased involvement in the implementation of the Strategy since it brings advantages to the entire spectrum of Guyanese businesses.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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