– says American Chamber of Commerce of Guyana president

GUYANA Office for Investment (Go-Invest) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Owen Verwey is confident that Guyana has the capacity to handle the expected increase in investments in the near future.

Verwey shared his views at the opening of Guyana Trade and Investment Exhibition (GuyTIE) 2018 at the Marriott Hotel on Thursday.

The four-day event which ends on September 22 attracted over 100 investors and over 50 exhibitors. Admission of exhibitors had to be closed due to a large influx of interested export-ready businesses.

“We’ve had tremendous support from all of the business community. We are apologising for not being able to accommodate everyone and we look forward to 2019 already and developing this activity further,” Verwey said.

President of the American Chamber of Commerce of Guyana (AMCHAM), Zulfikar Ally believes that Guyana must begin to prepare spaces which will cater for the masses that will soon arrive.

“Every day that goes by, the increase in demand that we have in Guyana, we’re seeing that the capacity and the capability that we have is running thin, so we have to make some very critical decisions, we have to expand. We need more hotels in Guyana like the Marriott so we would like to see more four or five-star hotels coming to Guyana,” he told this newspaper on Thursday.

He added: “We have to have proper accommodation, conference facilities, because really and truly, the amount of attention that is being placed on Guyana, the amount of investors that are looking into our country and what it has to offer, quite frankly we don’t have the capacity right now to accommodate all of them. But, we’re getting there so we need to see our infrastructure improve, we need to see more investments in five-star hotels.”

“These things take time, they won’t happen over time either, that is why I say the government and the private sector need to work together so that we can have the infrastructure in place to meet the demands that are currently out there for Guyana.”
At the same time, Verwey believes that Go-Invest has been managing well the increase in responsibilities that have come on its plate even as it now works to improve its strategic management.

“We’ve been doing that and we will continue to do that. The agency is going through a bit of a strategic review right now as we know. The Quality Structure Improvement Project, part of it is the Investment Promotion Strategy, the Export Promotion Strategy but more importantly is the organisational structure, [we’re] looking to see what sort of resources are required to get to that level of being able to supply the market and businesses with the necessary services they need,” Verwey said.

He added: “What it is that we need to do in-house [is find out whether there] is there any revenue collection option because we’re fully funded by subvention from the Government of Guyana.”

Apart from the booths on display at the Marriott Hotel, Go-Invest, in collaboration with the GuyTIE Committee, the Ministry of Business, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) and others, is facilitating visits to other potential businesses in the country.

“What we do have are people who are looking for many other things, we’ve got people who are looking at the forestry sector for lumber and more processed or value-added wood-related products. Some of them have had their individual meetings with the private sector and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry and some of them would have gone on site to meet businesses and this has been happening since the day before yesterday,” Verwey said.

Later at the event, Business Minister Dominic Gaskin added: “It’s all about the quality of the experience of both the buyers and the exhibitors. Buyers come to Guyana, they tour the expo, they interact but if they want to have other meetings, if they have other interests, we want to be able to facilitate that to make their visit to Guyana worth it.”