Industrial policy & employment creation

Dr Tarron Khemraj and Joycelyn T Williams

The high rate of unemployment in Guyana (around 40%) points to the urgent need for structural change to create new growth poles that allow for new sunrise industries to contribute to production and employment creation. Fixing the doing business indicators and the macro-environment for investment is only one limited way of stimulating new investment. Deliberate strategic planning and concerted action by the state to coordinate this thrust towards a more diversified economic base are necessary and urgent if growth is not to stagnate.

 

Product composition

Here we present a list of industrial products that can serve as a target for policymakers in the quest to create new industries that can increase employment:

Behind GDP figures are factories and service- providers that produce goods and services for the economy. Careful reflection will point squarely to light manufacturing as being the answer to the diversification question. This is the path that countries such as