Cost of blackouts, bribes in Guyana highest in Caribbean

Although the performance of local firms in Guyana, as measured by sales growth, is the highest in the Caribbean, power outages cost them more than their counterparts in the region, while the percentage paid in bribery is also the highest in the region, a new Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) study has found.

The study, titled “Constraints Affecting Guyana’s Private Sector: Survey Results,” was uthored by Guyanese economist Sukrishnalall Pasha, along with Elton Bollers and Mark Wenner of the IDB, who found that not only does it take longer for firms to access an electrical connection compared to their counterparts in the region (104 days compared to an the average of 62 days) but local firms also are subjected to more power outages, with longer durations.

Additionally, the study said that while only a few firms indicated that they were expected to pay a bribe for various government services, those who said they did estimated the cost as 4% of their annual sales figure.