Guyana is undergoing a period of great transformation, through which sizeable investments are expected to emerge, and to facilitate a smooth process of growth, Senior Economics Lecturer and Director of the University of Guyana (UG)’s GREEN Institute, Dr. Thomas Singh, believes that a National Investment Strategy should be crafted.

Speaking at a recent post-budget forum organised by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), Dr. Singh said that a few things are needed in light of Guyana’s development. The national investment strategy, he said, should be an important focus.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, earlier this year, Dr. Singh had explained that this national strategy should encompass environmental sustainability and inclusive development. This he believes would facilitate more equitable growth and development.
”If growth were more inclusive then the concerns of the poor would be incorporated in the decision making of those persons with the ability to invest,” he told this newspaper.
An important consideration for him is that the focus on environmental sustainability should not only be encouraged because an environmental agency requires it or because an environmental activist is lobbying for it.

Instead, he said that such a strategy must, ideally, engage all stakeholders in the decision-making process. Emphasis, the economist said, must be placed on those poorer or more vulnerable sections of the population.

He cautioned that a great inequality of income encourages the very poor sections of the population to operate in high growth sectors like mining, which might involve environmental degradation. This is just one nexus between environmental sustainability and inclusive development.

He noted too that Guyana’s economy is largely characterised by commodity production, whether it is rice, sugar or other agricultural products or the extractive industries. And this production, he explained, gives rise to ‘rent.’

In economics, economic rent is any payment to an owner or factor of production in excess of the costs needed to bring that factor into production.
“When you have an economy where rents are so pervasive, the economy is not a normal one and what becomes important is who owns the resources… if you compared that to an economy where there are many diversified economies, that would contribute to more equitable growth,” he explained.

In a diversified economy, which facilities more equity, he noted that more people will be able to contribute to the economy. The alternative, with pervasive economic rents and fewer sectors, is that only a handful of people are needed to make those sectors “work”, the economist reasoned.
And as such, he said: “We need a national investment strategy that is green, but inclusive and equitable.”