PSC Chairman…

– season accounts for 40 – 60% of yearly turnover
CHAIRMAN OF the Private Sector Commission Ramesh Dookhoo said that there is a hive of activity locally during the Christmas shopping season and that people are spending money, which justifies why the Christmas season accounts for about half of the turnover made for the year.
He said that many businesses ran out of goods and are trying to reorder before the end of the holidays. A walk down the busiest spots in the city would reveal this buss of business activity as the late shopping goes into the last lap and shoppers seek to take advantage of the best deals before they are gone.
“My observation is that persons have started to shop a lot earlier. Consumers have been able to manage their budgets and there seems to be more disposable income and more planned budgeting,” said Dookhoo.
The PSC Chairman believes the fact that public servants have received a five percent wage increase may have something to do with what is happening now in terms of the heightened activity, since the vast majority of shoppers are public servants.
According to Dookhoo, this period of high turnover of finances can set the tone for the rest of the fiscal year.
“This will be a record-breaking Christmas. There has been a remarkable level of private sector companies and businesses celebrating good results. So far I believe all the public companies would have done exceedingly well,” he said.
To illustrate this, he said that many companies are engaged in community outreaches during this time of year… “And there are indications that a lot more companies are partaking. I would encourage companies to give to the less fortunate.”
He said that mining companies in the interior are also reaching out and making a difference in the lives of the less fortunate.
Mentioning the trend of the opening of new shopping facilities across the country, Dookhoo said that this is a step in the right direction. “We have been seeing a replacement of shops with malls and shopping centres. I am proud that this is being done by Guyanese. Those types of businesses benefit consumers in many ways,” he said, citing the examples of new malls recently opened at Affiance and Charity on the Essequibo Coast.
Executive Director of the Private Sector Commission, Roubinder Rambarran, said that based on the information made available to the PSC, the month of December is accounting for between 40 percent and 60 percent of turnover for the year.
He said because of the health of businesses during this time, they have no difficulties accessing financing from the commercial banking sector, some members of whom make available short-term financing to be paid back in three to four months. This allows the business owners to stock up on purchases and make fast turnovers.
Rambarran said that this approach is working so well that many of the businesses are able to pay back the money on time.
According to the 2011 Doing Business report from the World Bank, Guyana has made significant reforms in terms of the mechanisms of starting a business, getting credit and facilitating cross-border trading over the period 2009 to 2010.
The report said that Guyana eased business start-up by digitising company records, which sped up the process of company name search and reservation. It said too that Guyana enhanced access to credit by establishing a regulatory framework that allows the licensing of private credit bureaus and gives borrowers the right to inspect their data and that Guyana improved its risk profiling system for customs inspection, reducing physical inspections of shipments and the time to trade.
The report said that apart from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Guyana has made the most reforms during the five-year period from 2006 to 2011.