The Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana’s School of En­tre­pre­neur­ship & Busi­ness In­no­va­tion (SE­BI) has en­tered a part­ner­ship with the Guyana Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (GRA) and the World Bank to in­tro­duce two piv­otal ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes: an As­so­ciate De­gree in Oil & Gas Ac­count­ing/Tax­a­tion/Au­dit and a Grad­u­ate Ex­ec­u­tive Diplo­ma in Oil & Gas Ac­count­ing/Tax­a­tion/Au­dit.

In re­sponse to the grow­ing need for di­ver­si­fied skills with­in the coun­try, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana has de­vel­oped the pro­grammes at the be­hest of the GRA, and the re­gion­al de­mand for pro­fes­sion­als in this field. 

The As­so­ciate De­gree is a two-year, 72-cred­it pro­gramme de­signed to meet high glob­al in­dus­try stan­dards. 

It fea­tures a rig­or­ous cur­ricu­lum cov­er­ing tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, an in­tro­duc­tion to the lo­cal and glob­al in­dus­try, fis­cal regimes, and oth­er es­sen­tial ar­eas of ac­count­ing, tax­a­tion, and au­dit­ing.

 Par­tic­i­pants will al­so gain prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence through at­tach­ments with the GRA and oth­er agen­cies in­volved in the Oil & Gas sec­tor.

The Grad­u­ate Ex­ec­u­tive Diplo­ma, a one-year, 45-cred­it pro­gramme, aims to en­hance the skills of GRA em­ploy­ees. It in­cludes mod­ules on an­a­lyt­ics, risk man­age­ment, Oil & Gas Law, and the core ar­eas of ac­count­ing, tax­a­tion, and au­dit­ing.

Prof. Ley­land Lu­cas, Dean of SE­BI, high­light­ed the im­por­tance of these pro­grammes in ad­dress­ing the skills gap in mon­i­tor­ing rev­enue flows. 

He not­ed that while the GRA has been striv­ing to man­age the sec­tor, the rapid ex­pan­sion of the in­dus­try and re­cruit­ment ef­forts by oth­er agen­cies have un­der­scored the need for these ed­u­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tives.

 With the sup­port of GRA and IMF per­son­nel, SE­BI has de­vel­oped these rig­or­ous pro­grammes to meet both im­me­di­ate and long-term needs.

Lu­cas em­pha­sised that par­tic­i­pants will be trained by top-tier fac­ul­ty, in­clud­ing ex­perts from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and the GRA. To en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty, lo­cal fac­ul­ty will al­so be in­volved, build­ing their knowl­edge and re­duc­ing de­pen­dence on in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts.

Vice Chan­cel­lor Prof. Palo­ma Mo­hamed ex­pressed her ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the col­lab­o­ra­tion, de­scrib­ing it as a crit­i­cal re­sponse to the grow­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed train­ing needs of the coun­try and re­gion. 

She laud­ed the ef­forts of the de­vel­op­ment team at SE­BI, the World Bank, and the GRA in de­vel­op­ing and in­tro­duc­ing this ground-break­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty.

The GRA al­so com­ment­ed on the sig­nif­i­cance of these pro­grammes for the Au­thor­i­ty and Guyana, un­der­scor­ing their po­ten­tial to build the hu­man cap­i­tal nec­es­sary to tack­le the chal­lenges in the Oil & Gas sec­tor.

The As­so­ciate De­gree in Oil & Gas Ac­count­ing/Tax­a­tion/Au­dit pro­gramme, which com­mences in the new Aca­d­e­m­ic Year, is open to qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als who have ei­ther grad­u­at­ed from an ac­cred­it­ed ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion or have com­plet­ed their sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion and meet the en­try re­quire­ments. 

The Grad­u­ate Ex­ec­u­tive Diplo­ma in Oil & Gas Ac­count­ing/Tax­a­tion/Au­dit, which al­so be­gins in the new Aca­d­e­m­ic Year, is pri­mar­i­ly open to in­di­vid­u­als ei­ther cur­rent­ly or in­ter­est­ed in en­ter­ing this sec­tor, with ex­pe­ri­ence in the ar­eas of Ac­count­ing/Tax­a­tion/Au­dit

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Sep. 25, CMC –

CMC/gy/kb/2025