On a 90-minute dri­ve from the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to George­town, the cap­i­tal of Guyana, one night last week, three jour­nal­ists from Trinidad and To­ba­go were stunned by the seem­ing­ly end­less stream of trucks head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. Dozens of trucks car­ry­ing road-build­ing ma­te­r­i­al zoomed past on a road that is in the process of be­ing widened to ac­com­mo­date the ever-in­creas­ing num­ber of vis­i­tors to the coun­try, as well as the new and for­eign-used cars that are be­ing pur­chased dai­ly by Guyanese, many of whom have ex­pe­ri­enced an im­prove­ment in their stan­dard of liv­ing in the last five years.

“Oil pro­duc­tion is fast ramp­ing up and, to­geth­er with strong non-oil growth and large-scale in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment, it is sup­port­ing the high­est re­al GDP growth rate in the world at a record­ed av­er­age of 47 per cent in 2022–24,” sum­marised the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) in its May 2025 Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion with the Guyanese au­thor­i­ties.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the side­lines of the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance (GBA) Sum­mit, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan un­der­scored the IMF’s point about large-scale in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment, not­ing there are 13 ho­tels ei­ther un­der con­struc­tion or re­cent­ly com­plet­ed in Guyana. The new prop­er­ties com­prise three Mar­riot ho­tels, two car­ry­ing the Hilton brand, a Hy­att and a Four Points.

In­clud­ed among the new ho­tels un­der con­struc­tion is a mas­sive 13-storey build­ing to be named Blue Ridge Ho­tel that is ex­pect­ed to have 500 rooms up­on com­ple­tion. That project, lo­cat­ed next to the Arthur Chung Con­fer­ence Cen­tre where the sum­mit was held, is be­ing un­der­tak­en by Pasha Glob­al, a Suri­name-head­quar­tered casi­no com­pa­ny, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Blue Bridge Inc, a George­town-based for­eign used car deal­er.

While the pri­vate sec­tor is lead­ing the con­struc­tion of ho­tels, the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana is un­der­tak­ing ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, such as roads and bridges, to im­prove the con­nec­tiv­i­ty of the coun­try, which hosts the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) sec­re­tari­at.

“We are on the verge of award­ing the con­tract for the sec­ond ter­mi­nal at the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. We are com­plet­ing the De­mer­ara Riv­er bridge. We are look­ing at bridg­ing the Coren­tyne Riv­er be­tween Guyana and Suri­name. We are look­ing at build­ing a new Berbice Riv­er bridge,” said the Pres­i­dent. Guyana is al­so com­plet­ing a num­ber of new re­gion­al hos­pi­tals.

Asked how Guyana con­trols cost over­runs and late de­liv­ery of in­fra­struc­tur­al projects, Pres­i­dent Ali said, “With prop­er project man­age­ment and great over­sight. I want you to look at all of our projects and com­pare the cost that we have paid for the type of in­vest­ment. Look at the in­vest­ment we are mak­ing in road­ways, in terms of the cost per kilo­me­tre.

Among some of the oth­er ways Guyanese are ben­e­fit­ing from the coun­try’s re­cent wealth in­clude: Uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion in the coun­try is now free of cost; the coun­try has a health vouch­er that has base­line health in­for­ma­tion; Guyana is work­ing on dig­i­tal health­care in­fra­struc­ture, which will in­clude a One Guyana dig­i­tal health card; a com­mon pay­ment plat­form to sup­port a dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial sys­tem. The South Amer­i­can coun­try is al­so in the process of mi­grat­ing all of its na­tion­al records on to a dig­i­tal sys­tem to re­duce bu­reau­cra­cy, re­move in­ef­fi­cien­cy, re­duce the cost of do­ing busi­ness and in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, said the pres­i­dent.

Asked whether Guyana’s oil rev­enues are be­ing dis­trib­uted eq­ui­tably, Ali first point­ed out that on­ly 37 per cent of the bud­get is fi­nanced from oil rev­enues.

“The rest of it speaks to the di­ver­si­fied na­ture of our econ­o­my. We are us­ing the rev­enues to in­vest and to cre­ate wealth. Oil re­sources are not wealth. Oil re­sources are rev­enue that can and should be used to cre­ate wealth.

“That is why we are us­ing the re­sources from the bud­get to cre­ate world-class in­fra­struc­ture, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion. All of our pen­sion­ers have the same eq­ui­table ac­cess to a non-con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion at 65.

“Every sin­gle new­born Guyanese child comes in­to the world with a grant giv­en to them. Every sin­gle child gets a Be­cause We Care grant. Every sin­gle child gets the same text­books in school. Every sin­gle teacher gets the same in­crease. Every sin­gle pub­lic ser­vant gets the same in­crease and every sin­gle farmer gets the same ben­e­fit that goes to them.

The Guyanese pres­i­dent said the coun­try’s oil rev­enues are be­ing dis­trib­uted eq­ui­tably “in prac­tice, in the­o­ry and by the de­f­i­n­i­tion of what is eq­ui­table.”

He ex­plained that the rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor goes in­to the Nat­ur­al Re­source Fund.

“For the mon­ey to go in­to the bud­get, it has to pass through a par­lia­men­tary process, which has its own ac­count­abil­i­ty. It must be passed by the Par­lia­ment and then it is au­dit­ed by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. We have an en­tire ecosys­tem that is sup­port­ing this.”

On the is­sue of whether Guyana has learnt any lessons from T&T’s LNG-in­spired boom from 1999, Pres­i­dent Ali said his coun­try is eval­u­at­ing the suc­cess­es and chal­lenges of T&T and oth­er coun­tries re­gard­ing the use of nat­ur­al re­source rev­enues.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pri­vate sec­tor has played, and con­tin­ues to play, a role in the de­vel­op­ment of our oil and gas re­sources. In the ini­tial phase in the de­vel­op­ment of our oil and gas sec­tor, much of that ca­pac­i­ty came from Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause they would have had the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Now, in Guyana, we have great ex­pe­ri­ence in deepsea drilling, which is go­ing to hap­pen in Trinidad. So we have built up that ca­pac­i­ty,” he said, re­fer­ring to re­ports last week that Exxon­Mo­bil is ne­go­ti­at­ing with the T&T gov­ern­ment to ex­plore for oil and gas in up to sev­en deep­wa­ter blocks off Trinidad’s east coast.

“Trinidad’s pri­vate sec­tor has ben­e­fit­ed enor­mous­ly from the de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion that is tak­ing place here,” the Guyanese leader sad.

In terms of the lessons learnt from the ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­er en­er­gy-rich coun­tries, Pres­i­dent Ali said, “What we are do­ing is what is good for Guyana. And what is good for Guyana is how we use the re­sources from oil and gas to ex­pand our econ­o­my, di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my, in­vest in hu­man cap­i­tal and in­vest in the mod­erni­sa­tion of the coun­try.

“We are build­ing a dig­i­tal Guyana. We are us­ing the en­er­gy re­sources to bridge that gap be­tween us and the rest of the world be­cause we want by 2030 to be on par with the rest of the world in or­der to com­pete. To do that, you have to in­vest in AI, in­vest in digi­ti­sa­tion, cre­ate an en­tire dig­i­tal plat­form through which the econ­o­my grows and mod­ernise our fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

“So we are not in com­par­i­son with any coun­try. We are humbly seek­ing to build an econ­o­my and a coun­try that sup­ports Guyana’s de­vel­op­ment and con­tributes to re­gion­al pros­per­i­ty. I have said it be­fore that we want to build a sys­tem here that must help the re­gion to pros­per.”

Pres­i­dent Ali’s goal to gen­er­ate wealth for the Guyanese peo­ple and con­tribute to re­gion­al pros­per­i­ty is why it is in­vest­ing in world-class ed­u­ca­tion and health­care.

“If you have the time, you should check some of the new hos­pi­tals that we have just com­mis­sioned. It is un­be­liev­able what we have achieved in just four-and-a-half to five years, with two years of COVID. It is a work in progress. You will see an econ­o­my here that is heav­i­ly fo­cussed. Look at the for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment. It is com­ing in agri­cul­ture, agro-pro­cess­ing, in tourism and in man­u­fac­tur­ing and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment. That is be­cause we have been able to build a plat­form and cre­ate a fis­cal in­cen­tive sys­tem that is telling the world that these are the ar­eas we see as key and crit­i­cal and these are the ar­eas we are in­vest­ing in to have a sol­id di­ver­si­fied, sus­tain­able econ­o­my.”

The Guyanese pres­i­dent said when the coun­try’s gas-to-en­er­gy project is com­mis­sioned in the next few years, the cost of elec­tric­i­ty will be re­duced by half.

“We are go­ing to have a mas­sive man­u­fac­tur­ing, agro-pro­cess­ing and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment be­ing done here,” he said.