What now appears to be the certainty of an economically transformative oil and gas industry has significantly altered international perceptions of Guyana as a prospective haven for investment and underscored the Guyana Office for Investment’s (GO-Invest) enhanced role in facilitating that external investment interest, the agency has said.
Last week in an uncharacteristically detailed media release assessing both its recent performance and its prognosis for external interest in investing in Guyana, going forward, the state investment agency declared that the first half of 2018 has seen interest in investing in Guyana growing “dramatically” as manifested in what it says has been ‘hundreds of local and foreign investors seeking to explore investment opportunities in Guyana across all sectors.” Specifically, it anticipates the local participation in joint venture investments in the country’s oil and gas sector is likely to accelerate in 2019 ahead of what is expected to be ‘first oil’ early in 2020.
On the whole, what it anticipates will be a “substantial and rapid increase in executed investment agreements” during the half of this year, should, it says, manifest itself in more than $95 billion in new projects being inserted into the country’s economic pipeline up to August this year. The Agency said in its release that these include projects that have already been submitted to the Government of Guyana but are currently the subject of due diligence probes by one or another of the various state agencies including GO-Invest itself, the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission or the Industrial Division of the Ministry of Business.
