“Guyana is a real opportunity,” according to Keith Duncan, co-chair of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC).
With the discovery of oil, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects Guyana to grow by some 86 per cent this year.
“Jamaican businesses need to figure out how we can expand our reach into the Guyana market, because there will be a lot of flows into Guyana,” Duncan told the Jamaica Observer.
“How do we as a country benefit from those flows?” Duncan asked. “Our businessmen need to look at it and really see how is it we can leverage it.”
Duncan, who is also the chief executive officer of financial group Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB) and president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), was speaking at the EPOC’s quarterly press briefing at the JMMB board room in New Kingston on Wednesday (February 5).
“Guyana is a small country with a population of about 750,000 and there will be skill sets that are required to drive that growth and infrastructure that they need to build out to drive that growth,” Duncan told the Caribbean Business Report (CBR).
“Trinidad is right across the road and JMMB is in Trinidad. I know that Trinidadian businessmen have been in Guyana, because they have expertise in oil and natural gas and the National Commercial Bank (NCB) has also announced that it is looking to finance arrangements in Guyana,” Duncan said, suggesting that other financial institutions may also be looking at entering.
Economic Growth
The World Economic Outlook (WE)) is projecting global growth to rise from 2.9 per cent in 2019 to 3.3 per cent in 2020, while growth in the Latin American and Caribbean region is expected to rebound to 1.6 per cent in 2020, EPOC noted in its outlook.
But while Guyana led the region last year with growth of more than four per cent, the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) projects Jamaica’s real GDP growth for the fiscal year 2019/20 to fall within the range of zero to one per cent.
“EPOC concurs with the view of the PIOJ that growth will be low for the remainder of the fiscal year 2019/20. However, EPOC expects that going forward through 2020 – 2022, as the impact of the fallout from mining is behind us, growth should begin to get back to the two per cent growth levels,” EPOC said.
Meanwhile, Duncan noted that Jamaica was finding it difficult to break the “two per cent” barrier.
Asked by the CBR about what areas could help Jamaica to break that barrier outside of the reopening of the JISCO alumina plant, Duncan said that the way ahead would include Jamaica moving on : taking down crime and violence with public consensus on tackling crime; social intervention especially in communities with high violence; greater access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses; greater training and moving towards more higher value roles — such as from business process outsourcing to knowledge process outsourcing, and the development of becoming the world’s fourth node for logistics. That logistical hub, he said, “would be a major opportunity for Jamaica,” noting that “businesses need to find out what is the supply chain opportunities for logistics”.
With all these things we can “see Jamaica eclipse that two per cent barrier,” Duncan said. (Jamaica Observer)
