We must do more with our natural resources

Friday, March 30th 2007 Stabroek News http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article?id=56517218

Dear Editor, The agricultural sector must be closely linked with and serve as a base for manufacturing activities. This kind of economic activity offers wide scope and opportunities for the involvement of individuals, households, groups and communities-apart from formal entities such as co-operatives and public corporations like the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (N.G.M.C.). The Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation has shown what can be done by successfully processing and marketing preserved fruits like the N.G.M.C. Our rivers and the waters-off shore teem with fish and other marine life. We have not yet begun to exploit these resources as fully and efficiently as we can for our benefit. We have to expand and make more efficient the fisheries sector, and establish a number of links with manufacturing. The manufacturing linked with the fisheries sector can be carried out by small scale as well as by large scale activities. Our forests abound with various species of woods which provide an ample base for a network of manufacturing activities. Many of these activities can be carried out on a small or a large scale too. The land is a great benefactor to us. It provides us with food and valuable timber. It also provides us with clays, minerals and sands which are important inputs in a wide range of manufacturing activities. We are already exploiting some of these materials. We must exploit more of them and expand our industrial base by processing them, to a further stage of manufacturing more by-products. Our strategy also requires us to accept as irrebuttable the proposition that there is no such thing as waste materials. All materials have some economic value or use. We have constantly to apply our ingenuity to the problem of discovering that economic use. For us, bagasse is "Waste Material"; rice husk is waste material; sawdust is waste materials; etc. In other countries these "Waste Materials" provide the basis for large and important manufacturing activities. Our industrial development must be stimulated and supported by a vigorous programme of scientific and technological research. This programme must seek to discover new and better economic uses for our raw materials; new and better methods of processing them; new and better techniques for improving the output and efficiency of the productive sectors. We have to harness science and technology to the cause of national development. The great objective must be to acquire the ability to process our raw materials to the highest stages possible so that we can enjoy the full benefit of the value-added. We must also produce as many as possible of the articles in common everyday use in the country. Yours faithfully, Mohamed Khan