With oil and gas related entrepreneurial opportunities having fixed world class business breakthroughs in the minds of the bigger players in the Guyana economy, the recent announcement by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) of its week-long Small Business Week, commencing on Saturday May 29th serves as a timely reminder to the local business community that lucrative entrepreneurial pursuits do not stop at oil and directly oil-related sectors.
There is almost certainly no oil-producing country, globally, that has not benefitted from the expanded economies that have derived from the oil and gas sector and even in what are still its ‘tender years’ as an oil-producing countries there is clear evidence that it has brought both direct and indirect additional business opportunities for the country, as a whole. These, one feels, have derived, in large measure, from something of a psychological shift that have spawned the advent of entrepreneurial pursuits, some of which are not even remotely connected to the oil and gas sector. Others are connected only insofar as it caters, in large measure, to travelers from abroad with a vested interest in the country’s oil and gas sector and the spinoffs that derive therefrom as well as to visitors to the ‘one-time’ Banana Republic which is now rated among the most prolific oil producers in the world.