Explore local investment opportunities – Finance Minister to Jamaicans

With financial experts from Jamaica in Guyana for the capital markets and investment conference, Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh has urged these experts not just to share their financial expertise and best practices with Guyana, but also to explore local investment opportunities.
Guyana hosted the capital markets and investment conference on October 3 to 4, in association with the Jamaica Stock Exchange. In his welcoming remarks at the opening of the conference on Tuesday, Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh provided the attendees with an overview of Guyana’s macro-economic status.
He revealed that between 2023 and 2026, Guyana is expected to average more than 25 per cent annually in real economic growth. According to Dr. Singh, the government remains committed to ensuring the continued growth of the non-oil sector.
“We, as a matter of deliberate policy objective, have committed ourselves to ensuring that we achieve and maintain high rates of economic growth in the non-oil economy. Hence the achievement of the first half of this year of real expansion in the non-oil economy of more than 12 per cent and projected expansion of more than 9 per cent.”
“As a matter of government policy, we intend to endeavor to maintain, going forward in the medium term, not necessarily show that we can maintain 9 per cent every year, but its our studied objective to maintain strong real non-oil economic growth,” the finance minister further said.
Further, Dr. Singh urged the attendees to explore investment opportunities in Guyana, as well as for the experts to share their financial best practices with Guyana. The finance minister encouraged the experts to present not just a single model, but multiple models whose examples Guyana could learn from.
“It would be remiss of me not to urge an audience such as yours, to take advantage of your presence in Guyana, not only to speak about the things that need to be done to promote capital market development, but also to reflect very seriously on the investment opportunities that exist in Guyana,” the finance minister said.
“I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity. The opportunity presented by this conference. Perhaps to share experiences, how others have done it, what worked elsewhere. What did not work elsewhere, including in the regions. We mustn’t be shy about speaking about the pitfalls that befell ourselves. We’ve all fallen into pitfalls once or twice, otherwise we haven’t been traversing a journey at all.”
He also made reference to Itel BPO, a Jamaican call center currently operating in Guyana, and its plans to expand. Back in 2021, Itel acquired Emerge BPO’s local operations, going on to add hundreds of new positions and make sweeping changes to the business’ operations.
“We could speak about services, including Business Process Outsourcing, which has created in the last three years more than 1500 jobs, including with the support and involvement of Jamaican investors,” Minister Singh said.
“Because there’s at least one Jamaican BPO, a fairly large Jamaican BPO, that has a very significant presence in Guyana and is the second or third largest BPO operating in Guyana, with plans to grow and expand. We have the world’s largest BPO also in Guyana, with plans to expand and open a second location. We see the BPO sector growing and creating new types of jobs.”
During the investments and capital markets conference, business leaders and Jamaican financial experts shared their insights on investing. The conference this year was hosted by Guyana and is notably the first regional conference held outside of Jamaica.
It provided a platform for key participants of the financial services industry to discuss and present ideas on issues pertinent to the development of the sector. It is also envisioned as helping to create partnerships and improved understanding between financial institutions to allow for the generation of investment opportunity. (G3)