Among the goals that will support Guyana’s massive transformation is technology which President Dr Irfaan Ali has said offers countless opportunities and prepares the country for the complex future needs of 2030.
President Ali addressed businessmen last weekend at an event where he explained that the country is progressing at a rapid pace and with this advancement, the use of technology must be at the forefront. Hence, the promised single window system will make Guyana more competitive for investment opportunities.
The President highlighted the need for change within the country and for the implementation of more technology-focused systems. He said Guyana now has many onlookers who are interested in the development and the competitiveness of the country depends on the decisions that are made now.
“If we believe we are facing competition now we are lying, the world in 2030 and beyond is going to be a far more complex and different environment than we have today.
“Unless we can build the infrastructure and the institutions that will allow us to be competitive, sustainable, and viable in 2030 and beyond, we are just marking time and I do not intend to mark time,” President Ali said.
The single-window permit system would make construction efforts much more efficient. For many years, persons looking to start up a business have to move from agency to agency to fulfill various requirements.
However, this initiative will improve the ease of doing business.
“We need to make the changes, I am accepting to you, that the system in which you wait two years for a permitting system is nonsense but we have to change that through a single window system utilising technology…The coding initiative, all of these things are important in this period of transformation and building our systems in the country to support the growth,” the Head of State said.
The Guyana Coders Initiative (GCI), deemed as the first-of-its-kind for the region, promises intense but globally-recognised skills training for at least 150,000 youth. This initiative is being pursued in collaboration with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), stemming from a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) inked in March 2022. It is geared at preparing Guyana’s youth for the technology-focused workforce; secondly, it is meant to help Guyana achieve its developmental goals in an accelerated manner.
Further, President Ali said the government sees the importance of improving the human resource capacity and so, new institutes and training centres are being constructed. He said that a lot of the skilled workers do not have the required certification for the job hence the government has teamed up with many foreign companies to get persons certified.