Guyana is open for busi­ness, the coun­try’s Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dr Ash­ni Singh says.

And that def­i­nite­ly in­cludes T&T busi­ness­es, Singh has as­sured.

Singh made the state­ment to Guardian Me­dia last week in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view held on the bal­cony of the Guyana Mar­riott Ho­tel in George­town dur­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence held there.

“Guyana con­tin­ues to pride it­self as a mem­ber of Cari­com and we have a long and good re­la­tion­ship with T&T that goes back many, many years,” Singh said.

Singh said this re­la­tion­ship has now been fur­ther bol­stered as a re­sult of Guyana’s en­try in­to the en­er­gy sec­tor of which T&T has been a part for some time.

“We wel­come T&T com­pa­nies com­ing to Guyana to do busi­ness, we wel­come com­pa­nies com­ing from every­where in the world in­to Guyana to do busi­ness but we al­so want to en­sure that we don’t miss this op­por­tu­ni­ty for do­mes­tic ca­pac­i­ty to be built up and for the Guyanese and Guyanese com­pa­nies to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly and ben­e­fit ful­ly from what’s hap­pen­ing in Guyana,” Singh said.

“And so even as we say Guyana is open to busi­ness for every­body from all over the world in­clud­ing, cer­tain­ly not ex­clud­ing but def­i­nite­ly in­clud­ing com­pa­nies from T&T many of who al­ready have this ca­pac­i­ty, al­ready have nav­i­gat­ed, have tra­versed this path, they al­ready have ca­pa­bil­i­ty etcetera we wel­come them com­ing to do busi­ness in Guyana there is no short­age of busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty in Guyana,” he said.

“But we al­so en­cour­age part­ner­ship with Guyanese com­pa­nies and Guyanese na­tion­als and that is the rea­son we have lo­cal con­tent leg­is­la­tion to en­cour­age in­stru­ments like the lo­cal con­tent frame­work that en­cour­ages part­ner­ship with Guyana so that lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty can al­so be built up and lo­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion can be max­imised,” Singh said.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of To­tal­tec Lars Man­gal urged Guyanese cit­i­zens not to be over­ly con­cerned by Tri­nis en­ter­ing the coun­try to work in the thriv­ing en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“There has been a long his­to­ry of col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in the Cari­com, it just so hap­pens that for ex­am­ple with Trinidad they have had a long his­to­ry in the oil and gas busi­ness so they had ca­pac­i­ty built up they were work­ing for the prime con­trac­tors out of Trinidad so it was on­ly nat­ur­al that they mi­grate or ex­pand that ser­vice of­fer­ing in­to Guyana that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly pre­clude the Guyanese from par­tic­i­pat­ing,” Man­gal said.

In­stead, Man­gal ad­vised the Guyanese to be in­spired to learn and be­come ex­perts in their own rights.

To­tal­tec is the in­dige­nous en­er­gy sec­tor part­ner op­er­at­ing in Guyana and Suri­name.

Guyana fer­tile for in­vest­ment

Singh said any­one con­sid­er­ing in­vest­ing or do­ing busi­ness in Guyana is do­ing so with a ju­ris­dic­tion that is pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue to grow at very ro­bust rates.

“Not on­ly are we grow­ing rapid­ly but we are grow­ing rapid­ly in an en­vi­ron­ment where in­fla­tion is still be­ing con­tained. Nat­u­ral­ly, an econ­o­my grow­ing as rapid­ly as ours will face some amount of in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures com­pound­ed of course by what is hap­pen­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” Singh said.

“But in­fla­tion has been con­tained to sin­gle dig­its and it will con­tin­ue to be con­tained to sin­gle dig­its, we have a sta­ble ex­change rate we have a favourable and at­trac­tive in­ter­est rate so you are com­ing to Guyana at a time when not on­ly are we grow­ing rapid­ly but we are grow­ing in a man­ner that con­tin­ues to re­flect all of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a sta­ble, rapid­ly grow­ing but nev­er­the­less sta­ble macro­eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment a place that in­deed we be­lieve makes Guyana and con­tin­ues to see Guyana re­main one of the most at­trac­tive in­vest­ment and one of the most at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tions for in­vest­ing and for do­ing busi­ness,” he said.

But even as Singh hailed Guyana’s op­por­tu­ni­ties, he lament­ed the bug­bears that some­times pre­vent in­ter­est­ed par­ties from vis­it­ing their shores.

Singh said that just to at­tend the four-day con­fer­ence some at­ten­dees had to book their ho­tel rooms months in ad­vance.

“Many of you are stay­ing far away from the con­fer­ence and have to en­dure, I see a lot of peo­ple nod­ding sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly, with the agony you would have gone through just to get a ho­tel room and there are times in Guyana, this con­fer­ence is one, this is a big con­fer­ence but it is by no means a mega event,” Singh said dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion to the con­fer­ence.

“ We have one big crick­et event and you don’t have enough rooms even for the busi­ness trav­ellers and so there is right now I think there are eight ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed ho­tels that are be­ing built out, names that you would recog­nise,” he said.

Singh said Guyana in­tends to use its cur­rent eco­nom­ic favour to help ad­dress these con­cerns and oth­ers re­lat­ed to ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

In 2019 Guyana’s to­tal in­vest­ment in roads and bridges through the bud­get was 11.8 bil­lion Guyana dol­lars.

In 2023 Guyana has bud­get­ed spend­ing 131.5 bil­lion Guyana dol­lars on roads and bridges.

“We see this in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture as ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal for lay­ing the foun­da­tion for long-term eco­nom­ic growth be­cause this in­fra­struc­ture im­proves our con­nec­tiv­i­ty with our neigh­bours to in­crease the eco­nom­ic space in which we are op­er­at­ing,” Singh said.

Singh said the first phase of a road to Brazil has al­ready be­gun along with a bridge to Suri­name.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly our ex­pec­ta­tion, our plan is that peo­ple and goods must be able to move by road from French Guiana, in­to Suri­name, in­to north­ern Brazil and back,” he said.

Guyana rules out na­tion­al car­ri­er

Singh said Guyana was at this time not con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al car­ri­er of its own but rather en­sur­ing that more in­ter­na­tion­al car­ri­ers were com­ing to its shores.

“Right now the at­ten­tion is re­al­ly on get­ting more in­ter­na­tion­al car­ri­ers to come to Guyana as you know British Air­ways will be in­tro­duc­ing a ser­vice at the end of March,” Singh said.

“We are en­cour­ag­ing and work­ing with oth­er big in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines for them to come to Guyana to in­tro­duce ser­vices whether di­rect­ly or through an in­ter­me­di­ary des­ti­na­tion like T&T. In the case of British Air­ways they are stop­ping in St Lu­cia on the way to Guyana which is good, it makes the des­ti­na­tion im­me­di­ate­ly vi­able and at­trac­tive and we want to en­cour­age more of the same, more in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies do­ing the same,” he said.

Guyana Air­ways had am­bi­tions to be­come the flag car­ri­er but failed to start op­er­a­tions since 2016.

It was grant­ed per­mis­sion in 2018 to use the name de­rived from the state-owned Guyana Air­ways (1963) de­clared bank­rupt in 2001.

The com­pa­ny had planned to start op­er­a­tions by 2019 from George­town Ched­di Ja­gan with two B737s to des­ti­na­tions such as Ha­vana In­ter­na­tion­al, Port of Spain, Bridgetown, and the Unit­ed States.