The roles of the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) and the Small Business Bureau (SBB), two state agencies that have previously come under critical performance-related scrutiny have been highlighted in Finance Minister Winston Jordan’s 2018 budget presentation for their respective roles in investment facilitation and enabling the growth of small and micro enterprises.
In his marathon budget speech on Monday, Jordan said that the Bureau had directly supported more than 1100 budding entrepreneurs for this year, so far, whilst more than 168 young persons had benefitted from business grants as part of the Youth Biz 592 project as well as a pilot in-school entrepreneurship project. Then turning to Go-Invest the Finance Minister said that the state-run investment promotion agency had facilitated “almost $23 billion in investments” which he said will “create over 970 jobs across various sectors, including services, agriculture and energy,” though he declined to provide a time-frame for the creation of the projected jobs.
And according to Jordan the investment promotion agency anticipates $154 billion in investments in 2018 that will create around 5,725 jobs. At the same time he announced that next year, Go-Invest will be hosting the first ever Guyana Trade and Investment Exposition “aimed at promoting collaboration between private sector actors towards knowledge-sharing and creating business partnerships.”
