By Karen Abrams, MBA
“Without women’s empowerment and gender equality, societies will not be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and their full development potential,” Claudinah Ramosepele, South Africa’s delegate to the Sixty-sixth UN General Assembly Third Committee, 2011.
This statement still applies to Guyana. Our population is too small, and our nation’s structural development requires too much work for any one gender,
ethnic group, or age category to be given overwhelming preference or exclusive access to opportunities to contribute to the nation’s development.
It is impossible for Guyana to achieve her full development potential if all citizens are not adequately prepared and given equal access to the opportunity to contribute. Simply put, Guyana, like every other country in the world, operates in a global society, which is intricately and inextricably tied via open trade laws and rapidly accessible technology. To compete favourably, the nation’s most creative and innovative thinkers must be engaged both in the public and private sectors without regard to ethnicity, political affiliation, gender, age or sexual orientation.
Recent surveys conducted by Vanderbilt University, LAPOP project and by the online project, Guyanareportcard.com both point to a truth that we all know. Guyanese citizens report the number one issue affecting their lives is job opportunity. Jobs are created by a thriving and innovative private sector and by an environment that encourages foreign direct investment that more than exploits the nation’s resources, but also adds value to Guyanese society by engaging Guyanese human resources and in general, being responsible corporate citizens. But what is this development that we seek for our country? How will we know when we have achieved ‘development’?
According to Wikipedia, there are no universally agreed-upon criteria for what makes a country developing versus developed and which countries fit these two categories. There is also criticism of the use of the term developing country. The term implies inferiority of a developing country or undeveloped country compared to a developed country, which many countries dislike. It assumes a desire to develop along the traditional western model of economic development.
More recently, there has been a focus on Gross National Happiness (GNH). Gross National Happiness is a measurement of the collective happiness in a nation.
So as we look directly to citizens for feedback on what will improve their collective happiness, some clear variables present themselves. Citizens of Guyana want jobs, safe communities, good roads, access to clean water, reliable electricity, good quality education and healthcare, and equal access to opportunity regardless of political affiliation, ethnicity, gender, age or sexual orientation. Improvements in these areas have traditionally been (but not exclusively) the sole responsibility of government. Improvements in these areas will depend, not only on the availability of funds in government coffers, but also on the existence of dynamic, realistic plans created by innovative leaders who in turn engage the services of high quality human resources to execute on these plans in an efficient and professional manner.
Private sector
So as we expand the discussion, it is clear that an increase in government funds generated through taxation, fees and international loans and grants are important factors in the economic and structural development citizens so desperately seek to improve their collective happiness. The sputtering Guyana economy will need to grow significantly and this will only happen if the private sector – the sole engine of economic growth in any country – is encouraged to invest through the creation of a business friendly environment. Such an environment will offer lower income tax rates, reduced fees and regulations, favourable investment incentives and a reduction in the bureaucracy that makes doing business in Guyana onerous.
Encouraging entrepreneurship
New entrepreneurs from both Guyana and the diaspora should be aggressively pursued and engaged. Programmes like the First Lady’s entrepreneurship training workshops, Empretec’s entrepreneurship workshops or IPED’s financing programmes should be promoted throughout the country and graduates of workshops should be funded through no-collateral, government-guaranteed, low-interest startup loans, accessible through the nation’s banks and other financial institutions. Business support services should be prioritized by government agency gatekeepers, who should be held accountable for making the operations of the organizations they lead efficient, professional and corruption free and those who are disorganized, corrupt or unwilling to do their jobs and who stymie progress and slow down development should be removed from any taxpayer-funded agency with little hesitation. Consumers should not hesitate to use or withhold their purchasing power to motivate the private sector to offer professional services. All are called to be involved in helping Guyana to achieve her full potential.
The diaspora
Today, the diaspora continues to play a critical role in Guyana’s development by the more than US$400 million annual contribution to GDP and yet we continue to hear decades old, horror stories of citizens from the diaspora who are forced to make multiple trips to Guyana just to meet a minister who will greenlight their project or to work out the details of some investment plan. The diaspora remains grossly under-utilized as their skills, which can be leveraged to make an immediate impact on the development of Guyana, remain dormant and untapped. Diaspora investors, like all investors, should be encouraged to return and offered the necessary incentives to make their remigration and economic investment seamless without regard to ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or political affiliation.
In this era of rapidly improving technology and near instant communication, Guyanese leaders must lean towards innovation, transparency and equal opportunity for all Guyanese. Guyana can ill-afford the ups and downs of alternating periods of ethnic or political hegemony and enduring gender bias that erodes momentum, encourages mediocrity, and undermines our nation’s march to economic development. For a significant improvement in the nation’s Gross National Happiness indicator to occur, all citizens, both at home and in the diaspora should be encouraged to contribute according to their abilities.
The leaders who focus on these goals and who are able to attract the relevant talent to realize them, will build a lasting legacy and contribute to the elusive economic improvements necessary to improve the variables, which positively impact the nation’s GNI indicator.
Guyana will indefinitely maintain an economic disadvantage if we continue to allow mediocrity and bias to influence how we manage, lead and allow access to opportunity.
Mine is a call to all citizens, both at home and in the diaspora, both in government and in the private sector, to release your fears and open up the country to innovation and creativity. We are competing on the global stage and we need the resources of our most innovative and creative minds to compete against those nations who allow their most innovative and creative minds to create opportunity for growth and development. To continue to operate in a partisan way is a recipe for failure.
Guyana needs all her people to help to make her the great nation she has the potential to be.
