MINISTER of Business, Dominic Gaskin, has said that government is working towards a Green State Development Strategy aimed at helping the country avoid the pitfalls associated with oil revenues.

The strategy which is currently in the draft stages should be finalised in the new year. It frames the general principles and themes around which the policy will be structured. The minister was among the many speakers during the opening of the two-day oil and gas

forum held on Monday at the Guyana Marriott International Hotel and sponsored by the Caribbean Central American Action (CCAA) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

“It will give Guyanese people the confidence needed to make sound decisions for their long-term well-being and will let investors know the director of the country and the economy,” Gaskin told potential investors from the public and private sectors.

The Green State Development Strategy is just one of the several strategies government plans to use to ensure that the private sector makes investments that will expand value-added sectors, apart from energy, with the support of government through its investments in improved infrastructure and access to fast and reliable networks.

Minister Gaskin said that private businesses need to position themselves strategically to get “piece of the action” or to increase their share of existing markets as they expand,” Minister Gaskin noted. He outlined reform initiatives that the Ministry of Business has undertaken over the last two years to ensure that this happens.

He noted the creation of a single electronic window for trade facilitation is one such initiative. “We feel that this is imperative in order to create a clean and efficient bureaucracy that will make it less costly to do business in Guyana and increase certainty and investor confidence,” Minister Gaskin said.

The Single Window System will allow companies to make online applications for licences and permits to various government agencies and conduct other business online. “It won’t be business as usual and in a rapidly growing economy, there will be need for better and more efficient regulation of key industries”, the minister noted.

Greater attention to standards and quality is part of the “new normal” that the government is fast-tracking Gaskin said, so business can be conducted with confidence in Guyana. To facilitate this, the ministry has undertaken the Enhancing the National Quality Structure for Economic Diversification and Trade Promotion Project.

“This is a project that is designed to improve our capacity to carry out testing and certifying activities by upgrading our entire national network of laboratories. It seeks to promote economic diversification by supporting the use of standards in our export industries and providing supporting testing facilities that are internationally accredited, so that our products and services can meet the requirements of the international marketplace,” Minister Gaskin explained.

This important project supports value-added production and export diversification, which the ministry is promoting through a sector-by-sector approach with private sector and industry stakeholders. “It will also help to build the capacity of local businesses to meet the requirements of the oil and gas sector in areas where opportunities exist, but strict standards are in place,” Minister Gaskin observed.

The Ministry of Business will seek to increase training and access to public procurement and finance by small businesses, as “unprecedented levels of growth” in the country’s economy when oil production begins.

Call centres
Speaking also at the forum, Minister of Public Telecommunication, Cathy Hughes, said the emerging Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in Guyana, has positioned the country on the globe for investments relating to the sector. She highlighted some of these areas at the conference.

According to the minister, the Offshore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has been growing exponentially in Guyana over the years, specifically call centres, and with Guyana being the only English-speaking country in South America, high literacy rates, and compatible accents with the USA and UK make the country an ideal host for BPOs.

Some of the BPO services offered here include Telemarketing, Inbound Customer Support, Medical Transcription, Voicemail Transcription, and Data Warehousing. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of animators in Guyana, with the first 15-seat animation studio established by Animatrix Studios in 2013. Hughes noted that Guyana can potentially offer services in the 2D and 3D market segmentations with a concentrated focus on 2D animation.

With vast amounts of underutilised real estate in Guyana, the establishment of a technology park can provide regular rental incomes for investors. The minister observed that with the construction of a technology park, a number of major projects from both the private and public sectors to smaller-scale projects such as ICT- startups can be housed there. It can also facilitate local outsourcing services such as university labs.

Minister Hughes said her office “will be putting mechanisms in place to encourage foreign investors to partner with local ICT Start-ups to be part of their supply chain from the lowest to highest-level needs.  This will create a new income stream for these small companies and allow them to gain invaluable experience.