As Guyana channels unprecedented oil revenues into highways, bridges, hospitals, hotels, schools and housing developments, STEMGuyana Founder and Executive Director Dr. Karen Abrams is warning that the country’s construction boom, while transforming the physical landscape, risks becoming an end in itself rather than the foundation for long-term economic development.
In an opinion column-The Construction Boom is Not a Development Plan– published by the Kaieteur News, Abrams argues that construction should serve a broader national development strategy, cautioning that roads, buildings and other infrastructure alone cannot sustain prosperity unless they create productive industries, quality jobs and lasting economic opportunities.
Her intervention comes as successive national budgets have devoted record sums to infrastructure. Since returning to office in 2020, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government has made public infrastructure the centrepiece of its development agenda. Budget 2024 allocated billions of dollars to roads, bridges, sea defences, housing and public buildings. Budget 2025, valued at $1.382 trillion, continued that trend, while Budget 2026—the country’s largest at $1.558 trillion—allocated approximately $196 billion for roads, bridges and transport infrastructure alone.
The massive public investment programme has reshaped Guyana’s landscape and skyline, but it has also attracted criticism over roads deteriorating shortly after completion, projects requiring repeated remedial works, escalating contract costs, delayed completion dates and billions of dollars in supplementary funding to finish works that had already been budgeted. High-profile projects, including the Gas-to-Energy development, have also seen substantial cost increases, prompting renewed debate over project management and value for money.
Abrams does not oppose the investment in infrastructure. Instead, she questions whether Guyana is sufficiently focused on what those investments will produce over the long term.
“Drive through Georgetown and the evidence of prosperity is everywhere you look. Cranes on the skyline. Hotels rising. Highways widening. Housing schemes spreading. Construction has become the visible face of the boom, and I understand why it inspires pride. After generations of making do, we are finally building. I feel it too.“
“But I want to ask a careful question this week, and I ask it as a friend of the building, not an opponent.”
“What happens after the ribbon is cut?”
Citing the World Bank’s April 2026 Latin America and Caribbean Economic Update, Abrams noted that Guyana’s non-oil economy is projected to expand by an average of 9.4 per cent annually through 2027. However, she said the composition of that growth reveals a potential imbalance.
Construction is projected to grow by 25.4 per cent, compared with 12.9 per cent for manufacturing and 7.6 per cent for agriculture.
“The non-oil boom, in other words, is being carried disproportionately by construction, and that matters because construction is what economists call derived demand,” she wrote.
“It responds to spending that originates elsewhere. When the State builds roads and the oil sector builds facilities, construction booms. When that spending slows, construction slows with it, because construction does not generate its own demand.”
“It is the echo of other money, not a source of it.”
Abrams argued that Guyana must distinguish between building physical infrastructure and building a productive economy capable of sustaining growth after oil revenues begin to decline.
“Building the country physically and building the country productively are not the same thing.”
She said infrastructure should be judged not by its scale or appearance but by the economic activity it unlocks.
“A road is valuable if it connects farmers to markets, children to schools, and businesses to customers. The same road is just expensive concrete if nothing productive grows along it.”
Likewise, she argued that hotels, ports and industrial parks should be measured by the businesses, exports and employment they generate years after construction ends.
“The question to ask of every project is not how impressive it looks on opening day but what income it keeps generating in year ten, after the contractors have been paid and gone.”
She also cautioned against relying too heavily on construction employment as a measure of economic success.
“The mason who builds a hotel cannot rebuild the same hotel every year. The carpenter who works on a bridge eventually finishes the bridge.“
“Sustainable prosperity requires industries that continue generating income and employment long after the final coat of paint has dried.“
Abrams urged policymakers to pair physical infrastructure with investments in agriculture, manufacturing, education, technology and workforce development so that public spending creates enduring economic value.
She called for Guyanese construction firms to be deliberately developed into engineering, design and project management companies capable of competing across the Caribbean, while public investments should be assessed according to the productive activity they stimulate rather than simply the infrastructure they deliver.
Above all, she argued that Guyana’s most valuable infrastructure is not concrete.
“The most productive infrastructure in any country is not concrete. It is human capability.”
While acknowledging government initiatives such as the GOAL scholarship programme and free tuition at the University of Guyana, Abrams pointed to what she described as a troubling contradiction.
“Yet, at the same time, every five years our secondary schools lose a comparable number of students who leave the system without matriculating. This is a national contradiction that must be urgently addressed.“
She concluded by arguing that Guyana’s historic oil revenues present a once-in-a-generation opportunity—but only if today’s construction boom is used to build productive industries rather than simply impressive structures.
“The cranes on our skyline are an opportunity that previous generations would have given anything to have. The task is to make sure that when they come down, they leave behind more than what they lifted. They should leave behind an economy that no longer needs the scaffolding.
“Because a crane can build a skyline, but only productive people and productive industries can build a prosperous nation. If we mistake construction for development, we may one day find ourselves surrounded by impressive buildings but still searching for an economy.”
