Transforming Guyana into A World-Class Economy

Feb 17, 2025 Letters

---

Dear Editor

The DNC will soon be publishing the policy proposals it will be offering Guyanese for the upcoming 2025 General Elections.  These along with the DNC’s Contract with Guyana will be available for download from tomorrow (www.dncgy.com).

The Democratic National Congress intends to set the stage for transforming Guyana into a strong, powerful trading nation in our first ten years.  With this in mind, we intend here to set the stage so that everyone is on the same page and understands the environment into which our economy will be unfolding. We have already asserted that the DNC reject completely racism in all its forms since in theory with much support from our own experience, racist ideas and policies produce sub-optimal outcomes.  This occurs because racism is a bias which often eliminates the best person for a job or contract, injecting instead persons and business contractors lacking qualifications and/or experience needed to execute the job or contract to required standards. The benefits of this we should be quite familiar.

Guyanese will also need to inculcate into their culture, their upbringing, that life is a cycle of three stages: The first 25-30 years being dedicated to studying/learning, the second stage to 30 to 45/50 years being where persons embark on an extended internship for working and learning everything there is to know about their chosen field career, and especially developing a potential customer base, virtually essential for the third phase.  This latter stage is where with all the knowledge and experience acquired brings them to the frontier of their field, where they can with networking establish a business that would be more likely to succeed because of developed networks as well as the customer base earlier referred to.  While this is generally the course for persons pursuing knowledge-intensive careers, the general idea is for Guyanese to scrap the idea of working until retirement to get a pension (we can see the unfortunate experiences of many workers in both the private and public sector doing so).  Instead, their secondary school curriculum should instill in them the knowledge and creativity of starting and running a business.

Starting a business generally requires the prospective business owner to become knowledgeable about prevailing laws, rules and regulations which govern the operations of whichever business venture is being undertaken.  These include regulations governing location, type and nature of raw materials, employee qualifications, compensation and safety, accounting and taxation, and maintenance of the environment to avoid degradation and/or harm to employees, customers and communities in which the business has its operations.

More persons getting involved in business brings with it challenges arising from competition.  Persons seeking a quick start/hustle into some business venture often find themselves with a lot of competition, since quick hustles can often also be easily undertaken by just about anyone, inclusive of your neighbour(s).  It is therefore probably not a very good idea to open a supermarket, start selling puri and curry with eggballs, etc., if your neighbour or persons where you want to sell are already doing so.  The idea behind starting a successful business is to do something for which you may have a talent, or which other persons will find extremely difficult getting started with.  Always beware of competition and give yourself time to be creative, to think of ways to either improve your product(s)/service(s), or find other more lucrative ventures. Becoming a successful businessperson requires intellectual dynamism, creativity, always looking for avenues to improve or discover/invent other worthwhile business opportunities.

The ultimate goal for businesspersons is financial security.  This is best secured by creating as many businesses as possible to achieve a diverse stream of revenues, which will always yield income for the owner even if one or two ventures are overrun by competition or fail for some other reason.

Expanding into the global marketplace.  Persons running household businesses such as food shops or engaged in commerce (buying and selling) usually find themselves confined to successes in the local market. Persons engaged in manufacturing and services on the other hand usually have the option to establish themselves abroad, sometimes very quickly, by setting up a website and advertising in the particular markets/countries in which they want to establish themselves.  As in the local market however, operating in foreign markets formally requires business owners to learn and understand the regulations of foreign markets, guided of course by the nature of intervention in these markets.  The Democratic National Congress considers it important for Guyanese to understand that they can shape their interaction in society by deciding to become a business operator, versus an employee.  However, success requires dedication, mental creativity and the ability to overcome challenges which may come in many forms.

Finally, higher welfare, increased economic wealth as a nation derives from international trade where our objective as a nation should be to mobilize all our resources, human/labour, financial, capital, land and entrepreneurial, towards producing not only to fulfill our domestic demands, but also to export as much as possible to a virtually insatiable global market.  With this as our shared vision, mission, we as individuals, as a nation, can and will find much benefit in working together to achieve our goal of unleashing our potential, of bringing Guyana into the 21st century.

Yours faithfully,

Craig Sylvester.

(Transforming Guyana into A World-Class Economy)

---

• 2025 General Elections., Democratic National Congress, policy proposals, racism, World-Class Economy

---