CULTIVATING a national innovation ecosystem for the birth, germination, and nurturing of fresh, new, original ideas for economic enterprises that could plug into this country’s private sector business-friendly atmosphere would provide every Guyanese with opportunities to play a role in the burgeoning growth happening now across the land. Government announced plans to reduce red-tape and bureaucracy in the business administration corridor, with the goal of encouraging more citizens to open new business, from coming up with an idea and seeing it to fruition without undue roadblocks, to sourcing funding and operating the enterprise with as little headache as possible. The nation’s exciting acceleration of economic development opens a wide range of possibilities for enterprising souls. Indeed, Guyanese all across the country are known for their enterprising spirit, for coming up with innovative solutions to pressing problems, and for inventing new ways to achieve their dreams.
This country is ripe for fresh ideas for new businesses, with government developing every sector for potential expansion and development, including the agro-processing industry. Across every sector, tourism, housing, mining, oil and gas, even on the climate front, opportunities abound. In the manufacturing world, the creative industry, the agriculture sphere, everywhere Guyanese look today, they could find an opportunity for investment and business operation.

It used to be that savvy business people focused on retail enterprises, with clothing and shoes and appliances and furniture and food some of the big attraction for investors. Eventually, malls started opening as the Real Estate industry took off under the housing miracle that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government performed from 1992 to 2015. Today, major international hotel brands, high-intensity tourism resorts, and entertainment enterprises are springing up almost on a daily basis, with investors flocking into the country from overseas, including from Caribbean countries. Government also rolled out incentives and attraction models for foreign investors and diaspora Guyanese, including tax breaks, and the State’s investment czar, Peter Ramsaroop, announced the welcoming, forward-thinking news that tax-free havens are in the works. In this scenario, Guyanese on the home front would be looking for how they could play their role. To encourage a robust, dynamic, energetic local investment atmosphere, with citizens even in remote villages and the hinterland feeling an integral part of this new economic dynamism sweeping the country, some important things need to happen. First, the country would do well to generate an innovation culture that cultivates good ideas, whereby people could pitch their ideas to the public, be able to refine research and development, and to develop written plans around operations.

Then, a vigorous national financing and funding ecosystem should be easily available to any citizen who came up with a workable, sensible plan. The model for such a financing system exists, with the experience of the Institute of Private Enterprise Development (IPED), albeit without the exorbitant, draconian interests on loans that IPED charges. A field for funding and financing would include a structure for banks to invest in talented new entrepreneurs, for a Fund, or series of Funds, whereby the public could easily purchase shares in a new enterprise, which includes strong accountability pillars, and a State-backed financing guarantee for cottage industries in remote villages. Guyana has a long way to go to reform the structure in place for local citizens to launch businesses, for example, reforming the business laws that tie registration fees to capital shareholding. It is impossible for a small business owner in Berbice, Essequibo and the Rupununi to launch a company here with share capital of millions of shares, for example, because the cost of registration is tied to declared share capital. So companies typically register small amounts of shares. This makes it hard for potential investors to purchase shares in a registered company, hampering investment on the local front.

The structure of shareholding in new companies is an important factor in developed economies, and one could easily register a company in Canada or the US with tens of millions of shares, making it possible and easy to raise capital and necessary financing from friends, family, and interested potential partners. Given Guyanese business acumen, one wants to see the business laws reformed so that not only sole proprietor enterprises are launched, but partnerships that tap into a pool of human resources with vested ownership interest, and pooled financial capital. To tap into the talents, skills, ideas and general human resources assets of the Guyanese nation, developing an innovation atmosphere across the land, and thus encouraging citizens to flood the national stage with fresh ideas and new thinking for business startups, would be a great structure for economic growth apart from macroeconomic projects and big foreign investments.

So much possibility is there for development, from landscaping local village fronts and even the waterfronts along rivers, as First Lady Arya Ali demonstrates with such vivid success, to village tourism endeavours, such as Annette Ali-Martin’s horse-cart tour along the East Coast seawall to showcase mangrove sea defence at work, to craft and agro-processing in Rupununni communities, and scores of others, across every facet of human society, that Guyanese everywhere could operate their own little piece of the national economy, not just as workers, but also as solution generators and entrepreneurs and visionaries. In this vein, the sugar industry would do well to tap into the experience of sugar workers for ideas, partnerships, and cottage industry entrepreneurial ventures that eventually divests some of the State subsidy into an innovation ecosystem whereby workers generate new revenue from creative application of their knowledge, experience, and skills. Guyana is ripe to become a business hub of exciting possibilities for Guyanese all across the land.