With the incentive of an oil-driven Guyana economy now seemingly well set to add a greater measure of regional and international interest in this year’s July 10-12 Caribbean Investment Forum (CIF), which will be hosted by Guyana, the organizers of the event in Georgetown are beginning to send a less talk, more business signal which they hope could persuade visiting potential investors that Guyana is becoming the investment haven of the region. The much anticipated CIF 2024 event follows what, in recent months, has been a number of high-profile events staged here, including this year’s ‘offering’ of the country’s annual Oil and Gas Forum for international investors. That event attracted the now customary annual gathering of opportunity seekers keen to ‘track down’ the investment opportunities that are now emerging from the country’s oil bonanza.
Even with the country’s now globally publicized oil wealth and attendant emergence as a lightning rod for international entrepreneurial interest, the country remains unready for the ‘big time.’ At the moment, the government is preoccupied with seeking to create a more convivial urban environment, on par with the presumed ambitions of the world’s newest oil giant and with the expectation of a continuous flow of opportunity seekers who now routinely find their way here. In several respects, there is evidence that effecting an overall upgrade of the country’s capital is regarded as key to favourable external responses to the various investor opportunities that the country has to offer. The problem is that while the ‘makeover’ is being effected the country’s capital appears to have descended into a
condition of what can only be described as pockets of disorder.
These days, there are few if any signs of the authorities working overtime to cause the country’s capital to appear somewhat more welcoming, in the immediate term. This, it seems is beyond the immediate capabilities of the government as it focuses on engaging one or another delegation of high-flying potential investor and state officials earnestly seeking to strengthen ties with what has become, arguably, the world’s best known emerging petro power. Whatever urban upgrading is happening appears to be proceeding at a proverbial snail’s pace.
If it appears that the state bureaucracy can often be frustratingly slow in expediting the myriad issues associated with the agendas of would-be investors, this is hardly an unsurprising eventuality in a country where the political leadership, at ministerial level, comprises functionaries who, for the most part, have never previously been prepared for such strenuous assignments. The sloth of the state bureaucracy here in expediting the concerns of potential investors, going forward, is almost certain to prove to be a challenge for a considerable period ahead. On the other hand, Guyana now having become, arguably, the most prominent Lode Star among developing countries, shrewd investors are likely to grin and bear the hindrances.
The Caribbean Export Development Agency (Carib Export), a regional trade and investment promotion entity that has risen to prominence over a relatively brief period of time, has been making its presence felt in pursuit of the transformative experience which Guyana, and by extension the wider Caribbean, is experiencing at this time. Carib Export’s ambition, it says, is to serve as the foremost regional trade and investment promotion agency “focused on building a resilient Caribbean by providing cutting-edge and high-impact support to the private sector.” The entity serves the region with the financial assistance of the European Union and one of its notable accomplishments, up to this time, has been its heading of a regional delegation to Ghana in July last year where it sought to open new avenues in the quest for the creation of robust trade links between the Caribbean and West Africa.
While July and the arrival here of the latest wave of potential investors to participate in this year’s Caribbean Investment Forum will still find the country’s urban makeover pottering along, the government will be hoping that visible progress will be made in pursuit of the desired urban makeover. Other things still get in the way of parading Guyana to the rest of the world as a much more than the ‘Banana Republic’ that it was once widely envisioned to be. By far the most prominent (and most destabilizing) is the dogged persistence of widespread power failures that continue to cripple the commercial and residential regions of the country and for which the government appears to have no answer.
Frequent and protracted power failures impact on residential communities as much as it does on key business centres, often leaving sections of the population sniggering over what they see as one of the world’s ‘energy giants’ seemingly strenuously exerting itself simply to keep the lights on. In other ways, too, the government still struggles to ‘sell’ the country as an emerging petro power. Across-the–board price increases, wages that still fail to come even close to matching prices and protestations over cost of living challenges, which in the instance of state-employed teachers, have metamorphosed into protracted action that sends a pointed message that selling Guyana to the world as an emerging giant is still likely to take some doing.
The July forum and its potential for further illuminating Guyana’s potential to become a change agent that could alter the development trajectory of the Caribbean as a whole was reflected recently in the comment made by Head of Cooperation of the European Union’s Delegation to Guyana, Suriname and Caribbean OCTs, Joan Nadal Sastre who articulated the EU’s full support for the forum and its mission. Still, the sense of excitement that is attending the ‘coming out’ party is beginning to be tempered by the realization that the journey is only now beginning.
