Georgetown, Guyana—(April 8, 2025) His Excellency President Dr Irfaan Ali emphasised his Government’s transformative vision for inclusive growth and development in Guyana during his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 2025 Local Content Summit on Tuesday at the Marriott Hotel.
The President outlined a three-pronged strategy to accelerate Guyana’s development through the empowerment of local businesses and citizens, the modernisation of the financial system, and the fostering of innovation-driven growth.
Some of the key initiatives include launching a national payment platform by the end of the year, establishing a Small and Medium-Size Enterprise (SME) Development Fund, creating co-investment opportunities across important sectors for Guyanese, and developing a world-class innovation centre in collaboration with NASA and the University of California, Berkeley.
“We want every single Guyanese, regardless of how much income you have, to have an opportunity to be in the wealth creation frame and the prosperity frame of our country.”
The President explained that the financial sector will be modernised and completely overhauled to support these initiatives. To complement this, his Government will deploy a massive community-based initiative focused on improving financial literacy across Guyana on “how to invest, how to save, how to budget and how to make sound financial decisions”.
Expanding on the creation of an SME Development Fund, the President said it will focus on prioritising different sectors, bringing together access to finance and using it to catalyse more funding from other commercial financial sources.
“It’s about how to develop a project that marries the development fund with the commercial banks so that you reduce risk and also you unlock additional funds for your project. It’s an unlocking mechanism. It’s a mechanism that can allow a good idea from a small business to become a medium-sized idea, because access to this fund unlocks opportunity for a much larger capital injection.”
The President also underscored the importance of creating in-country value through redirecting spending and investment into the local economy.
“How do we create the opportunities for businesses and individuals to redirect their spending back in the local economy, so that there will be no motivation for any company to establish shell companies or headquarters outside of Guyana. The system must create inbuilt incentives, inbuilt opportunities through which you can get a higher return by reinvesting your capital, reinvesting your resources in the local economy.”
President Ali also spoke about the impact the Local Content Legislation has had on local businesses, especially women-owned enterprises. He pointed out that in 2024, more than 1,100 Guyanese companies were added to the local content register, including a number of women-owned businesses in the second half of the year.
“These gains were not accidental. They were the direct result of a legislative framework that insisted—rightly—that Guyanese must not stand on the sidelines of their own development.”
The President urged local businesses to develop models where their prosperity can be shared with their employees.
“Building wealth and creating prosperity is not only about your businesses winning, it’s about your employees winning with your businesses.” He said that innovative profit-sharing models where employees could earn a “20% share if the innovation works” to spur workplace creativity and productivity can be examined.
“We should not be looking at business in the short term. We should be looking at how our investment today is going to create a better living for us tomorrow, and greater possibilities 10 years from now.”
This year’s Local Content Summit is being held under the theme “Collaborate. Invest. Build.”
