The inaugural International Business Conference, slated for later this year in Guyana, will provide small businesses with the tools they need to acquire international business partnerships.This is according to Dr. Vishnu Doerga who is the Chairman of  ActionInvest Caribbean and the Suriname-Guyana Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Doerga, who is also one of the main organisers of the conference, revealed during a recent interview with the Guyana Times that, unlike other international conferences of a similar nature that have been hosted in the country, the International Business Conference promises to provide a particular focus on small businesses.
He further explained that while many small businesses are given opportunities to network and grow, these partnerships are often incompatible due to a variety of factors.
“I see this happening frequently, where we bring large international companies, but we put them to sit and talk to a micro business or someone who doesn’t have any employees or doesn’t have the capital. That mismatch sometimes gives our country and our business community a bad image,” he stated.

On this point, Doerga highlighted that it is the responsibility of large and medium-sized enterprises to mentor and provide small businesses with the necessary resources that will allow them to establish a firm foundation on which they can build.

“We want to ensure that every Guyanese and Surinamese company has the opportunity to be able to participate at the lowest possible cost. It is the responsibility of our medium and large companies in Guyana to develop their own supply chain, to make sure that they work along with the micro and small businesses, to give them an opportunity to grow, to give them an opportunity to provide logistic services for them, to provide some level of supply of goods that they can purchase from those type of businesses. So that when a medium or a large company grows, they all grow together,” he explained.

Additionally, the Chairman noted that the local agro-processing sector has tremendous potential to be one of the country’s main economic drivers. He added that this potential is significantly reduced due to high production costs which is a direct result of the high cost of energy.
However, Doerga revealed that with the Government’s model Gas-to-Energy (GtE) project that is set to come on stream in 2025, production costs will be significantly reduced. It is for this reason, he explained, that the International Business Conference will strategically target businesses within the agro-processing sector.
“So, when we took a look at that, we decided okay great, we have a manufacturing association in Guyana, we reached out to them and they were already looking at a similar event and we decided to cooperate. And therefore, the focus is heavily on manufacturing and agro-processing with a focus on what is required for the entire supply chain and what are the opportunities so that we can also, at the end of the conference, be able to come out with a statement to say, these are the areas we investigated, we discussed, these are the proposals and these are the next steps we’re expecting,” he stated.

The International Business Conference – a first of its kind in the country – is set for October 15 to 17, 2024 at the Marriott Hotel in Georgetown. The event will provide businesses with a one-of-a-kind experience which allows them to browse a list of businesses and choose which establishments they would like to partner with. Already, over 500 delegates are booked for the event – 300 of which are new international investors seeking business opportunities in Guyana.
A total of US$500,000 was budgeted for the rolling out of the event, as members of the Suriname Guyana Chamber of Commerce and members of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association, along with about 10 other business support organisations in Guyana and the Caribbean will be receiving up to 50 per cent off rates.

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