Inconsistent
The disclosure that another hotel with an international brand will be built in Guyana has raised once again questions as to what the government’s real interest is in encouraging such types of foreign investment in Guyana. Traditionally, foreign investment refers to the movement of resources from a foreign country to a host country with the expectation that a long term relationship would result from the investment. The foreign investor would be expected also to control the production and distribution process of the enterprise that results from the investment. Typically, the foreign investment is about the reallocation of surplus resources from one country, the investing country, to the other country, the host or beneficiary country. That still stands. What seem to be inconsistent are the benefits that Guyana expects to receive from the foreign investment and what it is prepared to accept in the foreign investment package.
Greatest benefit
For a very long time, the foreign investment package was thought to consist primarily of surplus capital. Such capital contained foreign currency (money), technology (capital equipment) and high level management (human resources). That was how investment from countries was generally thought of whether it was of the Greenfield, mergers and acquisitions or the joint venture type. In the early days of foreign investment, it did not matter if the investment came from developed or developing countries. Following the theory of comparative advantage,