U.S. now eyes Guyana bauxite – Under Secretary of Economic Affairs

May 14, 2026 News

…wants to survey mining lands using advanced technologies to identify other minerals

Kaieteur Sports – The United States Government is eyeing Guyana’s bauxite mining industry, seeking to also survey mining lands to identify other minerals. This is according to Under Secretary of Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg.

U.S. now eyes Guyana bauxite – Under Secretary of Economic Affairs

U.S Under Secretary of Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg

Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon at the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown, Helberg told reporters that Washington’s plans to participate in Guyana’s bauxite industry were discussed during a meeting with President Irfaan Ali.

“We talked about the opportunities around bauxite and expanding Guyana’s economic activities in the bauxite sector with additional private investment. We also talked about ways that infrastructure investments, especially in roads and potentially autonomous trucking technology, can actually be catalytic to get more Guyanese bauxite on the global market,” the U.S official stated.

Guyana’s bauxite industry recorded robust growth in 2025, expanding by an estimated 53.4 per cent with total production reaching 3.9 million tonnes. Last year, export revenues climbing to US$144.1 million.

Helberg noted that bauxite was a key focus because reserves are already known and investors are already active in the sector. He said too, “So we did talk about things that were perspective, but obviously because the reserves of bauxite are known and there are already investments today, we talked a fair amount about those. But I think generally speaking, we both understand that Guyana is a country with a lot of natural resources.”

Bauxite mining in Guyana

Speaking of Guyana’s untapped natural resources potential, Helberg underscored that it would not be a leap to consider that there are more types of minerals that could be available if proper surveying of Guyana mining lands is conducted.

He said that it was also put to President Ali, that the U.S could play a role in surveying mining lands where the land still needs to be surveyed in a more extensive way, where large amounts of new reserves or other types of minerals are believed to be located.

Ultimately, he said that part of U.S strategy is to focus on bringing more foreign investment into Guyana, and to make it easier to undertake advanced types of surveying technologies.

“If Guyana is a hub for foreign investment, there will be a lot more foreign companies here, there will be a lot more capacity to do things like surveying if we get the first part right,” he noted.

Helberg further outlined that while Guyana has a lot of natural resources, the country needs to find ways to get its resources into off-take agreements and onto the global markets.

Helberg added, “So that led to a discussion on logistics and ways that Guyana can actually be a logistics hub for northern Brazil, which densely populated, into the northern part of South America in order to allow ships to go to Panama much more efficiently than the current graph today that currently forces that trade in northern Brazil to go through a really substantial multi-week detour. It has the opportunity to connecting Northern Brazil to the Caribbean through Guyana really has an opportunity to shrink time delays by several orders of magnitude.”

The Under Secretary labeled his discussions with the Guyanese head-of-state as very positive and noted that he believes it could actually be unlocked easily with the right level of business certainty.

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Economic Affairs, Guyana bauxite, Jacob Helberg, US/Guyana

One thought on “U.S. now eyes Guyana bauxite – Under Secretary of Economic Affairs”

Anonymous May 14, 2026 at 2:00 pm

Our president is selling out Guyana little buy little.

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