PARAMARIBO, Suriname – On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, the Suriname Investment and Trade Agency (SITA), an executive arm of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Business and Cooperation, hosted a Business Breakfast event to officially kick off Suriname’s Linkages & Local Content Agenda.
This pivotal event brought together directors, CEOs, and local suppliers to identify concrete opportunities, bottlenecks, and priority actions for 2026. The Business Breakfast served as a crucial platform to forge connections between foreign investors and Surinamese enterprises, with the overarching goal of strengthening the local value chain. It also marked the official Launch of SITA’s Linkages Developer Program Survey. The outputs from this event will directly feed into SITA’s matchmaking and aftercare efforts.
Director Amar Alakhramsing of SITA emphasized in his speech the growing importance of local development within Suriname’s investment climate. “Our role extends beyond merely attracting investments. We bear the responsibility to ensure that Surinamese companies can genuinely participate and benefit. Building bridges between foreign investors and local entrepreneurs is central to this endeavor.” Supplementing this, Preshant Awadhpersad, SITA’s Investment Director, elaborated that the Agenda encompasses a strategy “that strengthens our SME base, raises national capabilities, attracts higher-quality investment, and ensures that the benefits of growth are broadly shared.” He further stressed that “this requires an ecosystem approach: standards and skills that meet market needs, information and transparency in value chains, institutional coordination, and most importantly, strong linkages between buyers and local suppliers.” The urgency of this agenda is underscored by major investments that create demand for local goods and services, requiring firms to have clear standards and reliable suppliers. Simultaneously, local MSMEs need visibility and support to meet specifications (quality, HSSE, delivery), and a structured linkages program significantly reduces search and coordination costs for both sides, thereby accelerating purchase orders.
A key component of the program was the panel discussion “Local Content and the Impact of Local Linkages,” where experts and representatives from various sectors delved into opportunities, challenges, and preconditions for effective local participation. The presence of the Local Content Board on the panel underscored the institutional commitment to this objective. Additionally, the crucial Linkages Developer Program Survey was launched. This questionnaire, designed for both buyers and suppliers, represents the first systematic step in identifying capacities, gaps, and future business opportunities for Surinamese companies. Its primary objectives are: 1) to launch and drive completions of this survey; 2) to surface opportunities by capturing buyer categories/volumes and supplier capabilities; and 3) to accelerate local content by recording feasible 2026 actions and responsible owners. The results from this survey will be utilized by SITA “to plan and implement a Supplier Development Program that will support local companies to upgrade capacities and skills to meet the quality and volume requirements of large, local and international buyers of goods and services based in Suriname.”
The event concluded with a networking session, where participants established new contacts, explored collaboration possibilities, and discussed next steps for the further development of Suriname’s Linkages and Supplier Development Program, which aligns with the Local Content Agenda. The diverse audience included key buyers (“anchor firms”) from sectors such as O&G, construction/infrastructure, hospitality/tourism, logistics, ICT, and manufacturing/food, as well as registered and potential MSME suppliers across these same sectors, public sector representatives, and strategic partners.
