Guyana Business Overview

Business and Economic Overview

Businesses have the right to own property and maintain it and this is protected by law, but corruption and organised crime sometimes deter private-sector business activity. Businesses have stated that they are affected by several factors when doing business. These include telecommunications, electricity, transportation, access to land, tax rates, tax administration, customs and trade regulations, labour regulations, labour workforce, business regulations, access to finance, cost of finance, political environment, and the informal sector.

Data from several of these factors confirm the constraints businesses face in Guyana. The Global Competitiveness Report 2015-2016, identified inefficient government bureaucracy, corruption, access to finance, crime and theft, taxes, and inadequate supply of infrastructure as the most problematic factors for doing business in Guyana.

The 2014 PROTEqIN survey asked the local businesses to rank various obstacles as most serious, second most serious, and third most serious constraints.

The survey shows that  businesses rank the following as the most serious obstacles to their operations: electricity (15.1 percent), corruption (12.6 percent), tax rates (11.8 percent), practices of competitors in the informal sector (8.4 percent), telecommunications (7.6 percent), access to finance (7.6 percent), access to land for expansion/relocation (6.7 percent), inadequately educated workforce (6.7 percent), crime, theft, and disorder (5.9 percent), political environment (5 percent), transportation (4.2 percent), customs and trade regulations (4.2 percent), cost of finance (2.5 percent), and macroeconomic environment (1.7 percent).

Corruption was the second highest-ranked constraint identified by businesses as the most serious obstacle.