‘Guyana a premier hub for investments’ – Ashni Singh tells investors at Energy Conference

Feb 22, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Senior Minister in the Office of the President with the responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh on Wednesday told investors that with the rapid development taking place in Guyana, the country is the premier hub for investments.

The Senior Minister was at the time speaking on the economic impact of the energy sector during Day Three of the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo which was held at the Marriott Hotel in Kingston, Georgetown.

Describing why Guyana is the hub for investment, Dr. Singh spoke about Guyana already having the third largest amount of oil reserves in the hemisphere. Via a chart, Singh demonstrated that Guyana has oil reserves more than Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia, but not more than Venezuela and Brazil.

Speaking on the production side of things, Singh mentioned that with the country already producing some 645,000 barrels of oil per day, it is anticipated that by 2027 that number would move up to 1.2 million barrels of oil per day. According to the senior official, “the result of all of this is as you know, that Guyana is and has been the fastest growing economy and amongst the fastest growing economy in the world in recent years.” He added that Guyana has over the last three years been recording real economic growth on average in excess of 30% and that it is anticipated that over the next four years, real economic growth averaging about 20% going forward.

“Needless to say, in the outer years that will plateau and level off because of course we will be growing on higher base over with the passage of time. But the bottom line is that there has perhaps never been I certainly can’t think of any other country that has had such a sustained episode of extraordinary economic growth,” he told the conference. Having being the fastest growing economy, Singh pointed out that as it relates to the non-oil sector, the government has been placing the highest level of importance on ensuring strong non-oil economic growth, and growth in the non-oil sectors. “The bottom line is that we are on an overall basis, we are strongly outperforming the rest of the world, even on a non-oil basis, our real growth outstrips that of every single comparative that could be relevant to Guyana,” he mentioned.

Turning his focus on the size of the economy, he said that Guyana’s economy has more than tripled in size. He noted that Guyana has moved from an economy that was $1.5 trillion three or four years ago, to an economy that is almost $4 trillion, today, and this too is anticipated to grow.

Speaking on the private sector side of things, he mentioned that there is growth in credit of the domestic financial system to the private sector, that this growth is spread across several sectors, spread across services, and spread across lending for homeownership. Speaking on homeownership, he said that what the government found is that lending for homeownership, is in fact an almost risk-free lending in Guyana.

He continued, “…and so the domestic financial system has been responding within the confines of their capacity to respond because many of our domestic banks are still relatively small and they have still relatively modest balance sheets and so there’s a limit beyond which are challenged to respond.”

With this being said, he told investors, that “there’s an opportunity even for international banks to do business in Guyana, and we’ve seen a number of international banks responding accordingly.”

Why invest in Guyana, Singh told investors yesterday that Guyana and his government has demonstrated a sustained track record of responsible fiscal management. He went onto say that Guyana has been able to bring down its debt to GDP ratio from more than 600%, in the late 1980s and early 1990s to less than 30%, today. “That story has often been told. But there is a subtext to that story. There is a subsidiary headline to that story that is less or less often told and that is that we brought down our debt to GDP ratio from over 600% to 60%, before a single barrel of oil was discovered, and certainly before a single barrel of oil was produced,” he pointed out.

He continued to the investors, “And so you have in Guyana, and I say this because as investors, you look not only to opportunities of today, but you also look at the long term story, and you have in Guyana a strong performer over the long term. And the Guyanese story is really it’s largely about oil, but it’s certainly not only about oil, because this work has been going on for a long time and has been going on certainly before oil.”

The Senior Minister had mentioned also that Guyana in terms of indebtedness relative to the rest of the world, the country has the second lowest debt to GDP ratio in the western hemisphere.

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• Ashni Singh, Guyana, Investments, premier hub, to investors

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