Pres Ali meets with investors, new merchant bank Chairman

…discusses investment climate

In keeping with the Government’s commitment to facilitate more investments, President Dr Irfaan Ali on Tuesday met with a group of investors at the Office of the President, during which they discussed exactly that.

The investors were led into the meeting by Chairman and founder of the New Hayven Merchant Bank, Guyanese Professor and Financial Analyst Floyd Haynes, who only opened his bank in July of this year.
Besides Haynes and the investors, the Head of the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest), Dr Peter Ramsaroop, was also present at the meeting.
The New Hayven Merchant Bank is the first merchant bank to be licensed in Guyana in 30 years. The bank opened its doors in a ceremony in July of this year, to assist investors and small businesses in the country’s growing development.
At the time, Haynes had underscored that in the presence of opportunities and growing demands for investment, the ability to finance ventures is missing from the equation. It is a gap which the bank will be addressing.
“It is that gap that we sought to fill. That was the impetus for starting New Hayven…It is obvious that there is huge capital gap or money gap. In other words, there simply isn’t enough money to finance the transformation and development of this country in country.”
“So, some of those monies will come from multilaterals, friendly governments but it’ll be a loan. But a large part of that has to be private capital and that’s where we see New Hayven playing a crucial role,” Haynes had underlined.
The founder added that the strides to establish this merchant bank was years in the making but comes at a time when it is greatly needed. According to him, Guyana is at that time in its development trajectory where opportunities abound.
Meanwhile, President Ali had been present at the opening and had even delivered the feature address, during which he had underscored Government’s vision for shared prosperity and ideas to drive the country towards greater economic success.
“Sometimes we look for transformation in a road and building because that is physical but there are a number of things that must occur behind the scenes that you can’t see physically that are equally important in the transformation process,” The Head of State had expressed.
“The development of Guyana must be built on a foundation that delivers equal opportunities for everyone. But those opportunities must not only be spoken and that is why this investment is so critical.”
According to Ali, he will not support any “sideshow” events that have little bearing on the country’s development, but rather invest in areas to enhance Guyana in all sectors, not only in the economy but also the social sector.
“The road to sustainable and resilient development and a future that we can all look forward to requires diversification. It requires us to understand that the economy must stand on many different platforms. It requires us to understand what defines the diversification that we’re talking about.”
“If you try to understand diversification as financial diversification, you will fail. When we’re talking about national development it has to be an economic diversification that incorporate social components,” President Ali had said. (G3)