Guyana Energy Expo launches inaugural conference village to showcase local products

As the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo (GECSCE) gears up to host its highly anticipated energy conference beginning today, it has launched a new activity that will showcase Guyana’s agriculture sector and its products.
This year the organisers added a new event to the calendar of activities. Named the ‘Conference Village’ this event will allow local farmers and agro processors to display their produce and products to the international community.
Speaking at the launch event was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GECSCE Kiana Wilburg who highlighted that the conference village aligns with the Government’s sustainable development agenda.

“This conference village is the first of its kind for us and it’s an important initiative. It serves three main purposes. The first is that it ensures that irrespective of the conversations we’re having about leveraging Guyana’s natural resources for a sustainable future…We must always ensure that our policy leaders, our stakeholders bear in mind that agriculture will remain at the forefront of Guyana’s diversification agenda.”
The CEO added. “The second is to ensure that stakeholders within Guyana’s agriculture industry have a broader market within which to showcase their capabilities and the products with which our beautiful country produces. And thirdly, as you are well aware, the Guyana Energy Conference (GEC) is a hub for bringing international and regional experts and stakeholders within 26 industries and we want to showcase the potential of our farmers, our agro-processors and all those persons within the agricultural landscape… we want to showcase the investment opportunities that are available in Guyana’s agricultural landscape.”
Also present at the event was Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha who highlighted that both oil and gas and agriculture are key sectors in the country’s economy. On this point the Minister noted that it is important for stakeholders to find avenues to link these two areas.
“We want to merge the sectors within our country to show our potential and although oil and gas would have been a sector that is very attractive, the agriculture sector over the last four years have developed rapidly. We have seen agriculture, the growth in the agriculture sector has moved tremendously… crops or commodities that the Caribbean normally import. We are now producing it in Guyana, things like corn and soya, the high value crops and we are catering for the oil and gas sector, for the hospitality industry but more importantly to take in the slots that will be created when we start to reduce, we have already started to reduce the imports in the Caribbean to reach that 25 by 2025 goal.”
Moreover, with more than 4000 attendees registered for the Energy Conference, Minister Mustapha noted that the conference village will present numerous business opportunities for exhibitors.
“We have over 4,000 new products now in the agro-processing market and as Guyana rightly said we have a number of guests here, a number of investors that will be here for the next few days and I think that it’s a tremendous opportunity for agro-processors, our farmers to display and advertise their product so that Guyana can be that important destination in terms of producing agricultural produce and product in the Caribbean.”