GO-Invest facilitated $89.4B in investments last year

The Guyana Office For Investments (GO-Invest) failed to meet its target of $107.5B in investments for 2018.

At a press conference Monday morning at Duke Lodge, Chief Executive Officer, Owen Verwey disclosed that the agency enabled investments totalling $89.4B in 2018.

He said the agency had anticipated a significant increase in services to be provided to the developing oil and gas industry.

“We have seen some shortfalls…part of it is in the services area where we expected more activities or earlier activities as it relates to that,” the GO-Invest CEO said.

He added that, “we are now seeing that level of activities picking up significantly.”

The CEO further explained that there has been some delay in the approval and processing of contracts, however, a system is being put in place to remedy this.

Of the $89.4B in investments, 56 agreements were signed, accounting for $52.2B.

Of the 56 executed investments, the CEO reported that 38 were local, 15 were Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and three were joint ventures.

Among the FDI projects valuing $11.3B were the manufacturing of pre-cast construction materials, coco peat from coconut shells, ventures in transhipment and aviation and call centre.

The joint venture agreements valuing $2.3B were executed in the Energy, Tourism and Manufacturing sectors.

“According to the year-end performance indicators based on investors’ figures, these investments are expected to create 1,644 jobs when the projects are fully operational,” Verwey said.

He anticipated that the new jobs and associated opportunities will amplify Guyana’s human resource capabilities across key sectors including Agriculture, Light Manufacturing, Tourism, Services, Forestry and Energy.

The agency had already revised its 2018 target from $154B in investments to $107.5B in August 2018. At the time, Verwey had noted that negotiations which it had expected to complete in the first half of this year were not completed.

Through various local and international conference held, GO-Invest boasts of having secured 115 investment leads and 56 export leads including significant leads for traditional exports like rum as well as non-traditional exports like frozen fruit pulp.

While the CEO could not yet provide projections for 2019, he pointed out that the agency is working to upgrade its framework while it is also working with the Finance Ministry to support a new Public-Private Partnership unit and is liaising with the diaspora to promote Guyana as an investment destination.