REGION Six (Upper Corentyne/Berbice) Chairman, Mr. Zulfikar Mustapha, has noted that the future of the region looks bright and it is contributing meaningfully to the development of the rest of the country.
He made the observation Thursday prior to the launching of the Sixth Berbice Expo and Trade Fair which will be held under the theme ‘Promoting Economic Diversity’ from July 23 to 26.
Mustapha commended the Central Corentyne Chamber of Commerce for sustaining the activity that started five years ago.
“This year is the sixth launching and I think that we have to commend them because as one of the youngest chambers in our country, they have showed the rest how they could organize activities and get involved in community development,” he stated.
He said activities like expositions help tremendously not only in the business sector, but in developing the community.
Against this backdrop, he alluded to the chamber together with the Guyana Fire Service recently opening the first fire service at Rose Hall, adding, “we should commend the Central Corentyne Chamber of Commerce because from the beginning they were the initiator of this project and today it is a reality.”
He maintained that the economic benefits from these exhibitions and the other all-round benefits would be tremendous, explaining, “Because when business people come to Berbice or come to Region Six to display their products, on one hand the business people advertise their product and on the other hand the people within the community will have the spin-off effects from those sales that derive from these expositions and these advertisement that would act as a future build up to these business persons.”
Region Six has the potential and it is contributing meaningfully to the development of the country, he said, adding, “We have seen massive improvements over the years with the large amounts of finance that have been injected by the government to develop our county.”
“Today, we are contributing meaningfully to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of our country. Also, a lot of tourists are now coming to Region Six, and this would help the business to improve within our region.”
He said a lot of money was spent on developing an industrial estate in Region Six, noting, “The initial place was New Amsterdam but because of the reluctancy of the New Amsterdam Town Council to give the land, it was moved to Belvedere on the Corentyne, and I think that is a central point.”
The Regional Chairman challenged the chamber to initiate and help bring in people to apply for plots there.
He said basic infrastructural work has already been done, and the Central Government wants to inject more financing into those plots there but “we have to have people to take up these plots so that we can create more jobs for our people”.
He said that with the intended exploration for petroleum in the region, the Canadian firm CGX is doing massive infrastructural development at Crab Island and that project will create thousands of jobs for people in the region.
Zulfikar said more investments have been coming from the development of a bagging plant to pack cement, which has also opened up more jobs.
He said the fibre optic cable from Brazil by the government will expand Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and jobs will be opened up for young people.