Business, Investment: Legally, Quickly

To purchase land and to construct an appropriate building to establish a bakery, a restaurant, a school, an agro-factory or a medical clinic, the investor, his lawyers and advisers will face multiple challenges here. Not all are found to be necessary.

About a month ago media reports featured an American expert, Arthur Deakin, warning that “A culture of bribes, patronage and nepotism is the greatest danger to both Guyana and Suriname” regarding imminent oil-wealth equitable distribution.

At first I was a bit offended by thus “foreigner’s” observations. But Frankly Speaking the truth tends to hurt.

Ms Lyuch, Georgetown’s US Ambassador, reminded of our investment – bottlenecks: lengthy timelines for permits, uncertain approval processes, and concerns about procurement procedures even when submission guidelines are followed scrupulously. And that’s just a limited sampling of potentials woes.

Go-Invest – now styled “G-Invest”- the Guyana office for foreign and local investment- has once again promised to fulfil its “mission”: to cut bureaucratic red tape encourage ease of business. Noble objectives but realities here still include slothfulness to obtain permits for construction, for registrations, for health certificates, etcetera, etcetera.

As I conclude, for now, I challenge young journalists to investigate the procedures employed by G-Invest. And find out how many ministers, and agencies have to be approached to establish a restaurant somewhere. (why? And how long?)