When The Guyana Marketing  Corporation Starts Selling Imported Chicken , Who Is Marketing Guyana?

When The Guyana Marketing  Corporation Starts Selling Imported Chicken , Who Is Marketing Guyana?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar September 2026

There is something deeply wrong when an institution created to develop markets for Guyanese agriculture appears to be selling imported agricultural products to Guyanese consumers.

The photograph now circulating publicly shows what appears to be imported Brazilian chicken being distributed through an operation associated with the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC). The packaging is visibly in Portuguese, including the words “Frango sem Miúdos” — chicken without giblets.

That should prompt more than a casual glance. It should prompt a very simple question: When did the Guyana Marketing Corporation become a retailer and distributor of imported chicken?

 A MANDATE REWRITTEN WITHOUT NOTICE

According to GMC’s own website, its mandate is remarkably clear. The Corporation states that in 1985 there was a deliberate policy change resulting in the total cessation of its buying and selling operations. GMC was transformed into an institution focused on market facilitation for the private sector, local market development, market research, market intelligence, post-harvest technology, and the development and export of non-traditional agricultural produce.

Its current mission is even more explicit: “Facilitating and coordinating the development of quality non-traditional agricultural produce for export.” 

So what are we looking at today? If GMC is now importing chicken and retailing it, we have to ask whether the Corporation’s role has quietly been rewritten without the public being told.

FACILITATION IS NOT RETAIL

There may be a legitimate government reason for temporarily importing chicken. Recent government statements say imported chicken was intended to address temporary supply shortages and stabilize prices while protecting local poultry producers. The New GMC was reported as facilitating those imports.

But facilitating an emergency market intervention is one thing. Becoming a retailer of imported chicken is another. The distinction matters. GMC’s own advisory service says its job includes helping farmers understand market requirements, market-entry requirements, labelling, new markets, and the promotion of local produce.

WHY IS THIS CHICKEN NOT LABELLED IN ENGLISH?

That brings us to the second issue visible in the photograph: why is this chicken not labelled in English? This is not merely an aesthetic complaint about packaging.

Guyana’s Government Analyst–Food and Drug Department has previously warned importers, wholesalers and retailers that food products labelled in a foreign language should not be imported or sold on the local market, citing the Food and Drug Regulations’ labelling provisions under Regulation 18, which require label declarations to be in English.

The U.S. International Trade Administration’s current Guyana market guidance likewise states that all product labels must be in English, referencing Guyana’s labelling standards for pre-packaged foods.

Therefore, if the chicken shown in this photograph is being sold to Guyanese consumers through GMC, the public deserves an explanation.

Chicken packaging labeled in Portuguese at Mon Repos market.

♦Was the product properly approved for the Guyanese market?

♦Was an English-language label attached or provided?

♦Who imported it?

♦Who is the importer of record?

♦Who is responsible for ensuring compliance?

♦And why is a government agricultural marketing corporation involved in retailing it?

These are not hostile questions. They are accountability questions.

THE SIGNAL THIS SENDS TO GUYANESE FARMERS

Guyana says it wants to become food secure. It says it wants to expand agriculture. It says it wants farmers to produce more. It says it wants to develop agro-processing and export markets.

Then what message does it send to the poultry farmer when a government corporation established to support agricultural marketing is helping put imported chicken on the domestic market?

Government intervention may sometimes be necessary to protect consumers from excessive prices or temporary shortages. But such intervention must be surgical, transparent and temporary — not allowed to become a permanent substitute for fixing domestic production, storage, processing and distribution.

A government agency established to market Guyanese agriculture ends up marketing imported agriculture to Guyanese people. That is not agricultural transformation. That is managed dependency wearing an agricultural label.

 And there is another irony. GMC’s own website says the Corporation’s Guyana Shop was established to provide a platform for local agro-processors to market their products.

That is precisely what a public agricultural marketing institution should be doing: finding markets for the farmer, opening doors for the agro-processor, helping Guyanese products meet standards, building export capacity, and making “Made in Guyana, Grown in Guyana” mean something commercially. Not competing with the very producers it was established to help.

THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS

The question isn’t whether Guyanese consumers deserve reasonably priced chicken. Of course they do. The question is whether GMC is still doing the job Guyana created it to do.

If the government has deliberately expanded GMC’s mandate, tell the country. If this is merely a temporary emergency intervention, tell the country how long it will last and what safeguards protect local poultry producers. And if imported chicken can be sold through a government agricultural marketing institution without proper English labelling, the public is entitled to know why.

This board sees a possible mission drift. And when an institution stops doing the job it was created to do, the public has every right to ask: Who changed the mandate — and who gave them permission?

TWO PARADOXES WORTH NAMING

GMC is a public corporation with a distinct mandate: market Guyana’s products. Instead, we see it marketing imported chicken. Who flipped the script?

And there is a second, larger irony that has driven much of the public reaction to this photograph. Guyana has been described as self-sufficient in food production. That claim and this image cannot both be true in the way each has been presented. The public is entitled to ask which account is accurate — and who is responsible for the gap between the two.

Compounding the anomaly, the imported product is reported to be selling at a price below that of the locally produced chicken it is meant to supplement, not replace.

Too much tomfoolery.