The third of three days of the Trade Related Public Awareness Capacity Building Workshops ended on Thursday last at the Egbert Benjamin Conference Hall and Centre in Linden.

Those in attendance from Linden and its communities were informed as to how they can create and further expand on their existing ideas.

The Ministry of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation and the National Advisory Committee on External Negotiations (NACEN), with funding from the European Union TradeCom, facilitated the workshops titled ‘Exploiting Trade-Related Business Opportunities.’

Various stakeholders benefited from the workshops which were held in association with the Linden Chamber of Commerce and focused on the area of Planning and Developing of the Business Idea and Concept.

The exercise was designed to create and expand business plans in the Linden and rural communities

The programme challenges members of the communities to expand and plan avenues for community-based business opportunities.

Leader of the group of facilitators, Ramjet Singh, said “These workshops are aimed at building capacities amongst rural communities where we are trying to exploit trade relations and business opportunities. And so, essentially we are really open to all individuals and the approaches we need to focus on or what we call community based business activities.

It is expected that plans, if put into action, would generate personal and community income. The plan must meet the basic criteria of poverty alleviation, employment creation and environmental preservation. It challenges the groups to work together in the areas of marketing and production.

So far 22 communities have been involved in the project and competition for initiative development is expected to be high.

Singh mentioned that building capacities means facilitating groups within the communities to actually start planning and exploiting opportunities.

“Our hope is that every community come up with at least project so that they could then get assistance to fund it, because we do not want to tackle too many things,” Singh said.

“When we meet with the communities, we will ask them to prioritise so we feel that if you succeed in one area, then that will give you the incentive to move to other areas,” he said, Locally, the Director of Trade from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the contact person for persons or businesses willing to seek funding for recognised projects.

It is hoped that by the conclusion of the programme, the sale of Guyanese projects would be increased on the local and regional market.