–with offers starting form three percent
THE Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) has announced a sweeping overhaul of its mortgage portfolio, unveiling a new rate structure with interest as low as three per cent, in a move aimed at making homeownership more attainable for Guyanese families.
According to a press release from the bank, effective May 1, 2026, the revised rates are designed to support a wide cross-section of borrowers, from low-income and young professionals seeking their first home to customers building or refinancing higher-value properties.
According to the bank, the rates are tiered by loan size, starting at 3.5 per cent for mortgages up to $4 million, with incremental increases across higher brackets and negotiable terms above $60 million, while customers who deepen their relationship with the institution through the GBTI Advantage rewards programme can qualify for a further reduction of up to 0.5 percentage points, bringing the effective rate down to as low as three per cent for smaller loans.
The bank noted that loans up to $30 million in project cost may also fall under its Low-Income Housing Loan category, aligning its offerings with the government’s expanded low-income mortgage ceiling and thereby broadening access to cheaper finance for first-time homeowners.
GBTI has said that the combination of lower interest rates and rewards for customers who centralise their salary deposits, card services, insurance and investments with the bank translates into tangible monthly savings.
In the press statement, Senior Manager of Marketing, Pernell Cummings, said the bank wants every Guyanese family to feel that owning a home is more achievable than ever, emphasising that the new rates and the GBTI Advantage programme are about “real savings, real value and a banking relationship that grows with you.”
Chief Executive Officer, Shawn Gurcharran, framed the move within GBTI’s broader philosophy of building lifelong partnerships, noting that the institution aims to stand with customers from their first savings account to their first home and beyond.
He reiterated that the bank’s tagline, “Seeing Guyana Through Your Eyes,” is more than a marketing line and instead serves as a guiding principle for how it designs products in a rapidly changing economy.
The announcement comes at a time when Guyana’s housing sector is undergoing rapid expansion, buoyed by the country’s oil-fuelled economic growth and an aggressive public policy push to deliver serviced lots and turnkey homes to thousands of citizens.
In Budget 2026, the government allocated some $159.1 billion to the housing sector, with targets to distribute 15,000 new house lots, construct 8,000 homes across income brackets and deliver thousands of titles.
It was also reported that the steady escalation of the low-income mortgage ceiling over the past six years, noting that the threshold, which stood at $8 million in 2020, was first increased to $20 million and has now moved to $30 million as the administration seeks to keep pace with rising construction costs and ensure that lower- and middle-income earners can still qualify for favourable borrowing terms.
That policy shift has been reinforced by direct presidential interventions in the mortgage market: President Irfaan Ali previously pressed the New Building Society to raise its mortgage limit to $30 million with a cap of five per cent on interest, and had repeatedly argued that targeted measures, including interest rate reductions, have already contributed to a marked increase in the volume of housing loans disbursed.
Against this backdrop, the mortgage market has become increasingly competitive, with commercial banks repositioning themselves to capture new borrowers.
Earlier this year, Republic Bank (Guyana) announced that it was removing the cap on its residential mortgage ceiling and offering loans up to $60 million at five per cent interest, reinforcing a trend of downward pressure on rates and upward movement on loan limits as institutions chase a rapidly expanding pool of prospective homeowners.
GBTI’s new structure goes a step further by setting a floor below 3.5 per cent and by tying additional rate cuts to the depth of a customer’s relationship with the bank, signalling a strategy that blends price competition with customer retention.
