News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. July 25, 2023: Caribbean Investor Capital (CIC) has recently unveiled its plan to invest $4.5 million in Solengy, a company dedicated to solar energy projects in Haiti.

This investment will empower Solengy to expand its operations and bring clean energy solutions to more communities in Haiti, making a significant contribution to the country’s economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Moreover, the impact of Caribbean Investor Capital’s investment is expected to extend beyond financial gains. The expansion of solar energy infrastructure will generate job opportunities and stimulate economic progress in Haiti. Additionally, the shift towards clean energy sources will contribute to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting a healthier environment for the nation.

In essence, Caribbean Investor Capital’s $4.5 million investment in Solengy for solar energy projects in Haiti highlights the increasing focus on investment strategies that address environmental challenges. This endeavor not only fosters Haiti’s economic development and environmental well-being but also emphasizes the role of private capital in supporting the transition to clean energy solutions in developing countries. Furthermore, it underscores the significance of collaboration between financial institutions and impact-driven organizations in driving meaningful and positive change

By Jerry Haar and Cristina Caus

News Americas, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL, Tues. July 25, 2023: A cursory view of the political, economic and social environment in South America does not instill optimism. Economic and political challenges across the region erode the confidence of both local and foreign investors, reducing the likelihood of a strong post-pandemic recovery in the region.

Only one nation on the continent offers economic prospects – extremely bright ones, in fact – that are destined to catapult the nation towards sustainable prosperity – Guyana. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Guyana is expected to reach 37.2% in 2023 and 45.3% in 2024.

The principal driver of economic growth in Guyana is oil. Guyana outranks Saudi Arabia, Norway, Qatar as country with world’s second highest oil reserves per capita. A consortium led by ExxonMobil discovered the first major oil deposits in May 2015, more than 100 miles off Guyana. Hess, China’s CNOCC and other multinational oil companies and suppliers will continue to expand their investment and operations in Guyana and fortify linkages between upstream and downstream activities.

While almost all the attention in the media has been focused on investment in the oil sector, it is important to emphasize that trade, not just investment, is of vital importance to the Guyanese economy, particularly in light of the fact that it encompasses a diversity of sectors and industries and is more labor intensive than resource exploration and extraction.

Guyana’s value of imports of goods traded totaled $975 million at the end of the first quarter of 2023, representing a 31.3% increase when compared to the same period in 2022. The leading imports during this period were fuel and lubricants, contractors’ machinery, and special purpose machinery. The top three trading partners of imports for the first quarter 2023 were Trinidad and Tobago, the U.S. and China. Guyana’s main export partners are the U.S., Singapore, and the United Kingdom; and in terms of commodity exports these comprise sugar, gold, bauxite, aluminum, rice, shrimp and timber.

A member of CARICOM, Guyana enjoys preferential market access to the U.S. under the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, (CBTPA), and has an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union, (EU).

For a resource-based economy like Guyana’s the competitive challenge in the 21st century is diversification. Light manufacturing, with exports destined for Caribbean Basin trading partners, and services—especially with the increasing demand for nearshoring – along with non-traditional agriculture and agribusiness embody the diversified mix that can provide value-added for Guyana.

Be that as it may, the pre-requisite for competitiveness is a well-developed functioning infrastructure—physical, financial, technological and human – that allows a nation to capitalize on its existing assets while developing and sustaining new ones. For example, Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony has revealed that there has been much interest from local and international private sector bodies to develop a biomedical hub to expand the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. Without turning out a sufficient number of high quality biomedical and related professionals and technicians (who remain in Guyana rather than emigrate), such a goal is not feasible.

Within the realm of trade, Guyana confronts both external and internal barriers that impede its ability to compete effectively. In terms of external barriers, while some external barriers remain to Guyana’s exports, tariffs and quotas are far less restrictive today than in past generations. The remaining barriers are mostly non-tariff measures (NTMs) and are often imposed for legitimate reasons of health and safety. Increasingly there is a newer class of restrictions that seeks to serve larger environmental or social goals. These NTMs are most evident when it comes to trade in goods but can also be seen in the services sector. Just as exports of goods might be constrained by (for example) health and safety standards, exports of services can be constrained by partners’ restrictions on visas or refusal to recognize the qualifications of Guyanese professionals.

Guyana faces more tariff barriers in South-South than in North-South trade. The data show that other developing countries generally extend duty-free or low-duty treatment to the raw materials coming out of Guyana’s mines, wells, and forests, but they often impose high tariffs on fish, raw and processed agricultural products, and alcohol. Apart from the United Arab Emirates, where most tariffs are low, the developing countries very often protect products such as rice and sugar with tariffs as high as 50% (Ukraine), 65% (China), or even 90% (Panama).

The picture is quite different for the major developed-country markets, of which only Japan still erects anything like a tariff wall on products of interest to Guyana. Virtually all of Guyana’s exports to Canada and the European Union enter duty-free, whether on a most favored nation (MFN) basis, via the Canadian CARIBCAN program,

In essence, however, the magnitude of cross-border movement of goods and services is determined more by the competitiveness of national firms and the environment in which they operate at home than by the trade barriers that foreign governments choose to impose, waive, or remove.

As for internal barriers, a range of capacity limitations, from inadequate infrastructure to deficits in human capital, can adversely affect the country’s ability to produce and export competitive goods or services. The same may be said for taxes or regulations that discourage entrepreneurship, or policies that tolerate inefficiency and corruption. Similar points may be made with respect to regulatory matters associated with the financial sector. On the one hand, it can be costly to come into compliance with measures taken by some of Guyana’s partners with respect to Anti-Money-Laundering and Combating-the-Financing-of-Terrorism initiatives. On the other hand, failure to comply with such measures can leave an economy vulnerable to abuse by elements that are criminal or worse.

Certainly, the greatest internal barrier to trade for Guyana is its unenviable ranking in the World Bank’s Doing Business reports. When it comes to the “trading across borders” component of the report, Guyana beat only one of the 19 countries used as comparators in this strategy. The amount of time and money required to import and to export is excessive compared to most other countries.

While the future for Guyana is bright indeed, the country would be in an even stronger position if it increased diversification into manufacturing and services, introduced more Guyanese value-added into the production chain, streamlined bureaucracy, eliminated many of its VAT measures, and adhered to pro-market principles in guiding its policy agenda.

The 2021 UNCTAD report Guyana: A National Trade Strategy provides a path forward. Traveling down this route will surely produce dividends for the country, the private sector (foreign and domestic) and its citizens at large.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jerry Haar is a professor of international business at Florida International University and a global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Cristina Caus is an international oil and gas business developer and consultant and holds a master’s degree in international business from Florida International University.

By H. Arlington Chesney

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Thurs. July 20, 2023: The Caribbean, indeed, the world, is prioritising the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the modernisation of their national economies. This is associated with the proliferation of devices, such as, IoT, IIoT and InstructGPT with its sibling, ChatGPT, and Microsoft’s AI for Earth Programme.

The agricultural sector is part of this transformational process with the use of AI in agriculture globally projected to increase from US$1.1 billion in 2019 to US$3.8 billion by 2024. This favourable projection is linked to AI use in agriculture being associated Inter alia with increased efficiency and effectiveness, resulting in increased profitability and industry sustainability.

These beneficial outcomes are primarily due to the plethora of associated devices that are grouped as (1) algorithmic and (2) autonomous.

The algorithmic devices can collect, analyze and interpret gigantic quantities of data and make projections and/or predictions that exceeds human capacity and reliability improving with increasing data range and use.

This has led to AI being used inter alia to:

In crops, (i) forecast weather and hence best timing of planting; (ii) determine fertiliser, pesticide and irrigation water use; (iii) optimise supply chains; and (iv) forecast market peculiarities and readiness.

In livestock, (i) determine feeding patterns; and (ii) management of endemic diseases.

There are many autonomous devices, including drones and robots, conducting precision operations, such as:

In crops, land management and agronomic practices, including pest control, and pollination,

In livestock, milking, feeding and general husbandry.

In farm administration and management, transport, haulage and sanitation.

What Are The Implications For The Agriculture And Food Sectors In An Oil Rich Guyana And, By Extension, CARICOM?

Guyana’s President, Dr Irfaan Ali, CARICOM’s Lead Head for Agriculture, recently stated that the “Caribbean market must be positioned as a high-value specialised one”. It is now well demonstrated that the World Trade Organisation’s requirement for globally produced commodities to have relatively free access to national markets of developing countries, such as, Guyana, has hindered the growth of indigenous agricultural and food sectors.

Nonetheless, because of potential geopolitical pressures and the established trading patterns for food commodities prevailing in Guyana and Caricom, this status quo will not change significantly soon. Therefore, achievement of the position identified by President Ali, that is, food supply to a “high-value specialised” market, must be generally done with global competitiveness.

With the abundance of stated benefits associated with the use of AI in agriculture, the potential use in achieving competitiveness required of Guyana’s agriculture and food sector needs to be examined.

The use of AI in agriculture would not pose a mental block to practitioners in Guyana’s agricultural sector who have historically introduced innovative practices and techniques. For example, the sugar industry has utilised aircraft for fertilising and pest control and drones for assessing the state of its available lands. Similarly, the rice industry has “adapted” caged wheels for tractors operating under waterlogged conditions, utilized aircraft for seeding and fertilising and a land leveling “machine” which could be considered as a precursor within the concept of Machine Learning Systems.

Further, at a basic algorithmic level, farmers have established their timings for land preparation, planting and, hence, harvesting with traditional knowledge of the climatic seasons. Within that broad canvas, they determine best times to plant their short term and tree crops with the advent of the “full moon”. More recently, they have become aware that long droughts, associated with climatic changes, are followed by severe pest infestations. Consequently, they make early preparations to effect control.

Agriculture is a complex social, economic and environmental system that responds to the particular and peculiar metrics of Guyana; these metrics are/will be robustly dynamic with the impact of climate change. Consequently, the uses of AI in agriculture in Guyana can’t be transferred wholesale from the countries in which they are being used successfully. They must be tested, adapted and customised to ensure fit for purpose in Guyana. This process, which is tantamount to being a “living laboratory”, requires enhanced—numbers and specialties—technical and financial capacities. With respect to finance, Guyana can use some of its substantial current and projected oil and gas revenues. Once used wisely, this will be a profitable investment in the development of the country’s sustainable agricultural and food sectors of the future.

At the algorithmic level, particularly as it relates to data on weather patterns, the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology, in association with national Hydrometeorological Services, like Guyana’s, is making available Numerical Weather Predictions to the public, including those in the agricultural and food sectors. With support from the Extension Services, this information could then be used by individual small and large agrientrepreneurs to plan, with a level of precision, for farm activities. These would include time of land preparation, planting, weed control, husbandry practices and harvesting. This is particularly critical for the agriculturally important, but difficult to manage, heavy clay/silt soils of Guyana’s coastal and riverine areas.

Small farmers currently dominate the country’s food production sector. With their limited technical and instrumental capacity, the template of institutions (ministries or parastatals or agriculturally based associations) collecting and analysing data and developing projections must be promoted and strengthened. As stated previously, the use of AI, at both the algorithmic and autonomous levels, will require “living laboratories”. It’s recommended that these be located at the various ecological zones within Guyana. This will enhance possibilities of minimising risk whilst optimising possibilities for sustainable enterprise development. This is made more necessary because of the current high costs of autonomous devices.

A strong, innovative, visionary and responsive institutional model is essential.

Notwithstanding the above, there are some potential uses for AI in the developing agriculture and food sectors in Guyana. Firstly, at the algorithmic level, weather and soil data could be collected and analysed to project with significant statistical accuracy timing of critical agronomic practices and approaches to various marketplaces. This will require the Government to enhance its soil collection and analytical capacity to include in the first instance selected crops within specific ecological zones.

A further possibility is the collection of appropriate activity data throughout, – but particularly at the production segments -selected value chains, to facilitate the development of “traceability” models: a prerequisite as Guyana expands its production for its robustly expanding hospitality sector and for CARICOM and other export markets.

At the autonomous level, as Guyana, for climate change reasons, is moving southwards, away from the “threatened” coastlands, there is need to rapidly regularise occupancy to facilitate development plans. Drones are appropriate for this activity. However, the appropriate legal framework must be established, operationalised and institutionalised. Drones may also be used for planning the layout, including planting densities, of medium to large sized farms, growing corn, soybeans, rice, sugar, tree crops, and pasture grasses. Similarly, they can be used for pest control.

In the Intermediate and Rupununi Savannahs, whose topography is generally flat and/or undulating, appropriate planting, fertilising and harvesting autonomous machines can be adapted used. Naturally, this will depend on the capital cost and the ability to maintain an acceptable level of Return on Investment. These activities could serve as pilots for similar enterprises in Belize and Suriname and, in a more limited way, Jamaica. That is, with its favourable oil and gas revenues, Guyana can be the leader in the use of AI in Agriculture in CARICOM.

Clearly, there are challenges to its use, and these will be addressed in a subsequent article. However, suffice it to say that the successful use of AI, in ensuring long term resilient and consequently sustainable food systems and food security in Guyana, depends on the adequacy and competency of its HI, Human Intelligence.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr H Arlington D Chesney is a leading Caribbean agricultural professional who has served his country, the Caribbean and the hemisphere in the areas of research, education and development. He’s a professional Emeritus of IICA and, in 2011, was awarded Guyana‘s Golden Arrow of Achievement for his contribution to agricultural development in Guyana and the Caribbean.