GO-INVEST will closely monitor concessions granted to investors to ensure that they are used for the purpose intended, Chief Executive Officer of the entity, Keith Burrowes has said.The move is part of a wide effort to revamp the country’s premier investment agency. In a meeting with senior private-sector officials on Monday, Burrowes said that Go-Invest in the past willingly facilitated the granting of concessions, but will now be looking at the time taken for returns on investment.
“We are looking at models now that, for example, if you come to invest $50M, and you are given ‘X’ concession, we need to know what the rate of returns is worth, because it is taxpayers’ money,” he said.
The model chosen, he said, will give the Government a very clear indication of the returns on concessions granted and the time span within which they will be achieved.
Aside from monitoring concessions granted, the CEO said he will be pushing for more long-term private/public partnership investments.
Under the revamped Go-Invest, the Private Sector Commission (PSC), which in the past has been critical of some aspects of the operations of Go-Invest, will now have a representative on the board of the investment agency.
The new board is expected to be appointed before the third quarter of this year.
Burrowes said the entity welcomes constructive criticism, and acknowledged that there is still a lot to be done to make Go-Invest a model investment agency.
But he pointed out that some of the persons making unsubstantiated statements about Go-Invest are people who have benefited from the entity.
WORKING TOGETHER
The CEO nevertheless said he is happy to have the private sector on board and looks forward to a better working relationship with the private sector in improving the performance of the investment agency.
Go-Invest is currently looking at several models of investment and will be discussing these with the private sector before a final decision is made.
“We want to work hand in hand with the private sector in moving ahead,” Burrowes told members of the private sector at the meeting held in the boardroom of the investment agency.
PSC Chairman, Norman McLean said there needs to be a new dispensation with regard to how Go-Invest operates, contending that more aggressive efforts are needed to attract investors here.
He also lauded the move by Go-Invest to monitor concessions granted, and pointed out that there have been instances where there was a lot of talk about investment, but the investors never did what they were supposed to do.
Chairman of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), Clinton Williams, has noted that he has been one of the persons who have been critical of Go-Invest, but is happy that Burrowes is moving to address his concerns.
He also said it is important for Go-Invest to monitor all investments coming into Guyana, stressing that in the past some did not even go through Go-Invest.
Burrowes said this will change, as all potential investors will now have to make their first stop at the agency. He also pointed out that a year ago he had submitted a white paper to the former Government, requesting the establishment of a data base that captures all investments made in Guyana.
The paper, the Go-Invest CEO related, was approved, but he was not sure if it was ever implemented.

PRIVATE/PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP
Meanwhile, Williams lauded Burrowes’s advocacy for long-term private/public partnership investments, contending that these are needed in critical areas such as energy, manufacturing and infrastructural development.
The new Administration will be articulating publicly its expectations of Go-Invest and some of the changes that it would want to see in the entity.
In a recent interview with the Guyana Chronicle, Minister of Business, Dominic Gaskin said the country’s premier investment agency will undergo major reform, with strong attention being placed on fairness, transparency, good governance and aggressive promotion of the agency, both locally and abroad.
Under the new Government, Go-Invest will cease being an agency under the Office of the President and will now fall under the purview of the Ministry of Business.
Go-Invest, Gaskin said, was not adequately resourced to achieve what it was designed to achieve, and as Minister he would pay much attention to performance and not to anecdotal information, but hard, reliable data.

TRANSPARENCY
“One of the things I want with Go-Invest and the Ministry is to have data that is reliable and regularly made available to the public that would indicate performance and inform investors and the business community.
“Transparency has been very dear to us over the years. We constantly lamented the lack of information available to the public and we realise too that in the absence of hard data, it gives rise to speculation and most of the time speculation is not healthy. It does not help Guyana; it does not build confidence in the system and in our institutions. The thinking is if people have information, people can know what we are doing,” a confident Gaskin said.
For the time being, the challenges facing the entity are being identified. These will be fixed and the agency will begin to set benchmarks to be achieved. It will be guided by a strategic plan, which will soon be developed by Burrowes and his technical team.
To increase and promote investment here, Guyana will be moving to ensure Go-Invest has a vibrant presence in all the major countries where it has diplomatic representation. It will also establish investment desks at all its foreign missions.
“We can’t sit back and wait for people to show an interest in Guyana, we have to go out there and sell Guyana as a venue for doing business and as a venue for making profits. The agency responsible for doing that is primarily Go-Invest. We need to be strategic; this is something that we will be working towards to achieve over the next five years,” Minister Gaskin told this publication.