Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

For­mer­ly one of the poor­est coun­tries in the re­gion, Guyana is now trans­form­ing it­self in­to the in­vest­ment cap­i­tal of the Caribbean. A place to do busi­ness, a place to work, a place to play.

This is how T&T na­tion­als among oth­er coun­tries are view­ing this South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Some ob­servers pre­dict in fu­ture Guyana will be the next “Dubai of the Caribbean.” The Caribbean’s next best thing and a land of op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Guyana’s Fi­nance Min­is­ter Ash­ni Singh ex­pects the oil and gas sec­tor to grow by 96.7 per cent and the coun­try’s re­al Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) to in­crease by 47.5 per cent in 2022. Guyana’s fore­cast­ed oil pro­duc­tion of one mil­lion bar­rels per day (bbl/d) by 2030 and pro­ject­ed in­come of tens of bil­lions in the next decade puts it ahead of the rest of the Caribbean re­gion.

Guyana is even out­bid­ding T&T in some ar­eas as the world’s large multi­na­tion­als are head­ing there. It was re­port­ed last De­cem­ber that Pres­i­dent of Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana, Alas­tair Rout­ledge an­nounced that the US-based com­pa­ny moved all of its sup­ply chain ser­vices from T&T to Guyana.

While Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was un­able to at­tend Guyana’s en­er­gy con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary, En­er­gy Min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives, T&T’s busi­ness peo­ple as well as oth­er sec­tors of the coun­try were present and con­tin­ue to build ties.

A month ago UNC Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles said T&T has more to ben­e­fit from ties with ris­ing stars like Guyana rather than con­tro­ver­sial coun­tries like Venezuela and Iran.

Last week in Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles clashed over com­ments that Charles made about Guyana. Charles stat­ed that Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos Mia Mot­t­ley went to Guyana and “came back with 10,000 jobs” while Row­ley went to Qatar (and came back with no jobs), and asked if he should not have gone to Guyana in­stead.

Row­ley sug­gest­ed to Charles that he should go to Guyana (or Bar­ba­dos) to live as he “is al­ways talk­ing about Guyana” and Bar­ba­dos.

Charles al­so asked why Row­ley de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Ex­po in Guyana. Row­ley said this par­tic­u­lar in­vi­ta­tion did not fit his sched­ule but T&T was rep­re­sent­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and oth­er agen­cies and T&T’s busi­ness was con­duct­ed.

The ex­change be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Op­po­si­tion MP turned in­to a shout­ing match which Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George said she will not tol­er­ate.

Econ­o­mist and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions con­sul­tant Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Sun­day Guardian de­spite its poor past, Guyana is do­ing all the right things to po­si­tion it­self as one of the re­gion’s ris­ing stars.

Busi­ness­man Derek Chin who was born in Guyana en­cour­aged busi­ness peo­ple as well as peo­ple from all walks of life to head to Guyana where op­por­tu­ni­ties are plen­ti­ful.

Jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ties

T&T has had decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor and now they are tak­ing that ex­pe­ri­ence to Guyana. Kai­eteur News in Guyana in an ar­ti­cle in 2021 spoke about T&T’s com­pa­nies “flood­ing Guyana’s oil sec­tor.”

Sev­er­al Trinida­di­an com­pa­nies re­cent­ly ap­plied to Guyana’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) for per­mis­sion to set up a lo­cal base. These com­pa­nies in­clude Weath­er­ford, Unit­ed In­de­pen­dent Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Vista Trad­ing and Lo­gis­tics, and Non-De­struc­tive Testers Lim­it­ed (NDTL).

The ANSA McAL con­glom­er­ate al­so has a pres­ence in Guyana in sec­tors like con­struc­tion and the me­dia.

Paving com­pa­nies have al­ready set up op­er­a­tions there as well.

www.caribbean­jobs.com has al­so been ad­ver­tis­ing jobs that T&T na­tion­als can ap­ply for in Guyana, some of which in­clude Ge­ot­ech­ni­cal/Ma­te­ri­als En­gi­neer, re­tail store op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, HR man­ag­er and pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer.

More op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana mean a greater need for con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

Three weeks ago, Caribbean Air­lines an­nounced it will launch a new ser­vice be­tween Guyana and Hous­ton un­til the end of June. The car­ri­er will fly three times a week be­tween George­town and Hous­ton In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal, and flights start­ed on March 22. The tim­ing of flights will al­so al­low pas­sen­gers to con­nect with Caribbean Air­lines’ Port-of-Spain hub in T&T.

Re­tail and en­ter­tain­ment

Peo­ple are al­so see­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana’s en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor and mon­ey to be made there. Guyanese-born Chin, who came to T&T as a child, is op­ti­mistic about Guyana’s fu­ture.

He told the Sun­day Guardian that Guyana’s past is one of pover­ty and un­der­de­vel­op­ment but qual­i­fied that by say­ing that the re­cent oil dis­cov­ery in Guyana will cat­a­pult the coun­try in­to a “be­he­moth.”

Chin opened a Movi­eTowne com­plex in Guyana in 2019 and up to this time, it is the biggest en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre of its type there.

He said he in­vest­ed US$50 mil­lion in the project. It came at a time when there was po­lit­i­cal con­flict and one year lat­er, the pan­dem­ic ar­rived.

He added that not long af­ter Movi­eTowne was opened in Guyana, the coun­try struck gold with large oil dis­cov­er­ies. He re­mains ex­cit­ed about Movi­eTowne’s fu­ture and the fu­ture of Guyana in gen­er­al.

Chin de­scribed Guyanese as in­tel­li­gent and hard-work­ing peo­ple and en­cour­ages in­vestors to put their mon­ey there.

At the same time, he said Guyana was a new­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­try so a lot of work has to be done to de­vel­op ba­sic in­fra­struc­tures like pow­er plants, wa­ter, roads and oth­er ba­sics. Chin is hope­ful over the next few years there will be a ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion.

Lessons to learn from T&T

IR con­sul­tant Gon­za­les point­ed out that Guyana’s econ­o­my is grow­ing by “leaps and bounds” and it is be ex­pect­ed that the coun­try will have a se­cure fu­ture once they use the re­sources prop­er­ly.

“There is a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ty for busi­ness, there is high de­mand for skilled labour and a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties that were not there be­fore. It is a land of op­por­tu­ni­ty now com­pared to what it was be­fore. Be­fore it was bare­ly sur­viv­ing.”

He at­trib­uted this new-found in­ter­est in Guyana to the re­cent oil dis­cov­er­ies there which he de­scribed as one of the most im­por­tant in the world.

“There is a lot of con­struc­tion tak­ing place. They are putting in a deep­wa­ter har­bour as well. They are putting a bridge across the De­mer­ara Riv­er. There’s a lot of in­fra­struc­ture work to be done.”

De­spite the ba­sic steps it has made, Gon­za­les said Guyana still has a long way to go be­fore it can claim to be the “Dubai of the Caribbean.”

“It may take Guyana three decades be­fore they can reach there. They will need a sig­nif­i­cant flow of in­vest­ment and mi­grants. They have a lot of land and oth­er re­sources to be ex­ploit­ed.”

He hopes Guyana learns from some of T&T’s past er­rors and the Guyanese do not re­ly on oil at the ex­pense of oth­er parts of their econ­o­my.

He called this the “Dutch Dis­ease” where coun­tries re­ly on oil at the ex­pense of their agri­cul­ture sec­tor and oth­er sec­tors which die leav­ing them dan­ger­ous­ly over-re­liant on one prod­uct to sus­tain their econ­o­my.

“I am sure they have their ad­vis­ers and they will not make the same mis­takes as Ar­genti­na or T&T or sim­i­lar coun­tries.”

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS