Employees must “win” as businesses grow wealth – Pres. Ali says Govt creating enabling environment

President Dr Irfaan Ali has asserted that as businesses expand and grow wealth, so too must their employees.

Speaking during the opening of the Local Content Summit on Tuesday, the Guyanese leader said the government is working on creating an enabling environment where such practices are incentivised.

President Ali noted that the government plans to roll out a wealth creation strategy that will benefit all citizens.

Under this strategy, he said there will be widespread financial literacy campaigns, teaching citizens “how to invest, how to save, how to budget, how to make sound financial decisions.”

“We will have a massive deployment of community-based initiatives dealing with financial literacy, educating every segment of the population,” the president, who is seeking re-election this year, informed.

Another aspect of this strategy, he said, is to incentivise regulations to further support local business development and engineer the building of partnerships in new areas.

“And when I talk about incentivising, it’s also allowing your employees to be a part of what you’re doing, and not (just be) employees receiving salaries… because growing wealth…and creating prosperity is not only about businesses winning, it’s about employees winning with your businesses and creating an enabling environment in which your employees must win with you so they will deliver better every single day,” President Ali said.

The third component is executing a complete overhaul of the country’s financial system, he added.

This, he said, would include incentivising the financial sector to deploy more capital.

Another aspect is to create in-country value to redirect spending and investment in the local economy.

“So that there will be no motive 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 higher returns, by reinvesting your capital and resources in the local economy,” the Head of State explained.

President Ali has already revealed his government’s plan to soon create co-investment opportunities for citizens.

At the Local Content Summit, he reiterated this plan, noting that such opportunities could become available through the gas projects, fertiliser plant initiative, as well as the through the agrochemicals and petrochemicals industries.

Meanwhile, the President noted that the government also plans to create a Small-and-Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) Development Fund, to improve access to capital for these categories of businesses.