Entrepreneurs will keep us rich

Governments are usually judged by the projects they build-roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and stadiums. In Guyana’s oil era, there is certainly no shortage of those, but demanding cash grants, the opposition complains that the poor cannot eat roads. However, in addition to infrastructure, the government is also working to create a nation of entrepreneurs rather than a nation dependent on government handouts.
That distinction matters. The easiest thing an oil-rich government can do is spend, but building entrepreneurs is much harder. It requires persuading citizens that the greatest opportunity is not simply to work for the government or to secure a subcontract from the existing supply chain, but to create businesses that employ others, develop new products, and compete beyond Guyana’s borders.
To its credit, the government has increasingly embraced that philosophy. The grants to small businesses, financing initiatives, training programs, support for agro-processing, encouragement of technology ventures, and promotion of youth entrepreneurship all point in the same direction. They represent an understanding that oil wealth, by itself, creates very little. It is what citizens do with that wealth that ultimately determines whether a country prospers or merely enjoys a temporary boom.
This marks a significant departure from Guyana’s traditional economic model. For generations, economic advancement meant obtaining a government job, joining a state corporation, or finding employment with one of a handful of dominant private firms. Entrepreneurship was often seen as something undertaken only when “regular” jobs could not be found. That mentality made sense in a poor economy with limited capital and few opportunities but not in today’s Guyana.
Oil revenues have unleashed construction, logistics, hospitality, information technology, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and professional services on a scale unimaginable just a decade ago. Every new highway, shore base, hotel, and industrial estate creates dozens of opportunities that the government itself cannot possibly exploit. Those opportunities belong to private citizens willing to identify needs and fill them.
The challenge now is ensuring that Guyanese-not just foreign investors-become the principal beneficiaries of this economic transformation. That requires an entrepreneurial class capable of thinking beyond contracts and concessions. Too often, local business discussions still revolve around winning government tenders or servicing multinational corporations. There is nothing inherently wrong with either. But neither should become the ceiling of our ambition.
The real prize lies in building companies that export software instead of simply importing it; manufacture products instead of merely distributing them; process agricultural commodities instead of shipping them raw; and develop technologies that others are willing to buy. That is how small countries like Singapore became prosperous.
If entrepreneurship is truly to become the second pillar of Guyana’s development, bureaucratic obstacles must disappear with the same urgency as old buildings. A young entrepreneur should not spend months navigating permits, licenses, and approvals while opportunities evaporate. Access to financing must continue becoming broader than connections or inherited wealth. Regulation must facilitate enterprise rather than suffocate it.
The government is creating these conditions, but citizens must create the wealth. That distinction is fundamental. Yes, oil belongs to the nation, but prosperity cannot permanently flow from the Treasury. It must eventually flow from factories, farms, laboratories, software companies, engineering firms, restaurants, tourism operators, and thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises that owe their existence to the imagination of Guyanese rather than to the generosity of the state.
There is also a political dividend that deserves more attention. A nation of entrepreneurs is a nation with a broader middle class, a stronger tax base, and citizens who are less dependent on whichever party occupies office. Independent businesses produce independent citizens. Economic self-reliance has always been one of democracy’s strongest foundations.
For all the political battles that dominate our headlines, this may ultimately prove to be the administration’s most consequential policy choice: facilitating the country’s greatest resource sitting all along in the imagination, ambition, and enterprise of our people. That is why encouraging entrepreneurship is not simply good economics. It is perhaps the wisest political investment this government can make-and one that future administrations, regardless of party, would do well to preserve.