Picture this – you are a Guyanese, your trade is food catering and you possess the necessary certifications. Business is good, but it certainly has the potential to be greater. Suddenly one day, you read in the news that foreign oil companies operating in Guyana must use your business as part of local content efforts.

Now, with the influx of revenues from these companies utilising your catering services, you’ve been able to rapidly expand by opening new branches, hiring more staff, and offering more products. Your food catering business, which started from small humble roots, now has the potential to be not only regionally competitive but globally too.

This is precisely what the Local Content Act has been fostering since its implementation in 2022. Prioritising the use of Guyanese products and services, alongside the hiring of Guyanese talent, all while ensuring that locals are adequately trained, this Act has been the impetus for significant growth in the supply chain of Guyana’s petroleum sector.

So how noteworthy has the growth been? The Local Content Secretariat (LCS), a unit which was birthed in tandem with the passage of the Local Content Act back in 2021, has been closely regulating, enforcing and monitoring this, alongside other local content activities. In its reporting, this unit within the Ministry of Natural Resources found the following:

Dr Martin Pertab, the Director of the LCS, underscored how remarkable the growth for Guyanese businesses has been since the Act’s implementation in 2022, to date.

Over this period, business opportunities for Guyanese suppliers have surged by US$110 million, he noted, marking a substantial 25% increase. This expansion, Dr Pertab remarked, highlights how dynamic the Guyanese market is in its bid to adequately meet industry demands.

“This year, the rise in procurement activities stems from the increased operations offshore, especially now that we have a third FPSO producing oil,” Dr Pertab remarked.

He added too that these heightened operations have resulted in the secretariat now reviewing over 40 Local Content Annual Plans, as compared to 30 in 2023.

He explained that these plans, which are submitted to the LCS, provide a detailed roadmap for an oil company’s procurement, employment and capacity development strategies, outlining the necessary resources and expenditures needed to achieve specified objectives.

Part of the unit’s mandate is to review and recommend those plans, where necessary, for the Minister of Natural Resources’ approval.

Spanning across food catering, legal and medical services, and food supply – to name a few – the Act’s First Schedule outlines 40 different services which allow the active participation of Guyanese suppliers in the petroleum sector. As part of its monitoring and evaluation functions, the secretariat has identified the following sectors as having the highest procurement spending for 2024.

It is important to note that while there are 40 sectors ringfenced in the legislation, it does not stop Guyanese from offering goods and services that are not included in that list. Already, locals have capitalised on this, with suppliers now offering services such as pipe welding, offshore painting, offshore construction and GIS services.

Something notable to recognise, too, is that as the industry evolves,  so will the Local Content Act. The government of the day recognises this and has already taken steps to ensure that there is a review of the sectors identified for Guyanese participation. With the government’s continued support and strategic planning, businesses that once had modest beginnings now have the potential to compete on a global scale, showcasing the success and future promise of Guyana’s local content efforts.