Guyana’s proposed Development Bank has been widely welcomed as a long-overdue solution to one of the country’s biggest constraints on entrepreneurship—limited access to affordable financing. But business strategist and technology educator Dr. Karen Abrams argues that unless the institution is designed to build globally competitive businesses rather than simply distribute loans, it risks becoming another source of credit without fundamentally transforming the economy.
In a column published Kaieteur News on July 12, Abrams described the establishment of the Development Bank as “one of the most important economic initiatives undertaken by this administration,” acknowledging that access to capital has long prevented many Guyanese entrepreneurs from expanding beyond the startup phase.
The Government has announced that the bank will be capitalised with US$100 million, offering interest-free loans of up to G$3 million with reduced collateral requirements to entrepreneurs, farmers, women, young people and persons with disabilities. Successful applicants will also be eligible to access an additional G$7 million through participating commercial banks, while the institution is expected to provide mentoring, proposal-writing assistance and business development support.
Abrams argues, however, that access to financing is only one piece of a much larger economic puzzle.
Drawing on her experience as a former corporate executive in the United States, her Master of Business Administration (MBA), and her work as co-founder and Executive Director STEMGuyana and Pathway Online Academy, she argues that history has repeatedly shown that capital alone does not create prosperous economies.
Development banks around the world have succeeded not because they issued loans, she contends, but because they helped entrepreneurs build businesses capable of competing, innovating and finding markets. The greatest challenge facing Guyana’s private sector, Abrams suggests, is structural rather than financial.
Despite becoming one of the world’s fastest-growing economies through oil production, Guyana remains a country of fewer than one million people. That reality imposes natural limits on domestic demand. Financing hundreds of new restaurants, hardware stores, retail outlets or transportation services may increase business ownership, but it also risks creating a saturated marketplace where many enterprises compete for the same limited pool of customers.
“This is not a failure of entrepreneurship. It is a limitation of market size,” she wrote.
Abrams argues that the Development Bank should therefore become an instrument for expanding Guyana’s economic reach beyond its borders rather than intensifying competition within them.
Advances in digital technology, artificial intelligence and remote work, she noted, now allow Guyanese professionals to earn foreign exchange without leaving the country. Software developers, accountants, marketers, consultants, tutors and other knowledge-based professionals can all serve international clients while operating from Georgetown, Linden, Berbice or elsewhere.
Such businesses, she argues, inject new income into the economy rather than redistributing money already circulating domestically.
Her vision also extends beyond financing entrepreneurs themselves. Abrams contends that the Development Bank should deliberately cultivate what she describes as business support infrastructure—the accountants, lawyers, marketers, branding specialists, artificial intelligence consultants, website developers, business planners and export advisers that enable other businesses to grow.
Rather than treating these services as overhead costs, she argues they should be viewed as economic infrastructure every bit as important as roads, bridges or electricity because competitive businesses cannot thrive without them. In that context, Abrams challenges how the Bank’s performance should ultimately be measured.
Success, she argues, should not be judged by the number of loans approved or the volume of money disbursed. More meaningful indicators would include business survival rates, export growth, sustainable employment and the emergence of companies capable of standing on their own without continued government support.
“The objective should never be to create businesses that remain permanently dependent on government financing. The objective should be to create companies capable of standing on their own, competing internationally and generating wealth across generations.”
Her argument comes as Guyana seeks to leverage unprecedented oil revenues to diversify an economy historically dependent on commodities such as sugar, rice, gold and bauxite. Economists have long warned that sustained prosperity will depend on building productive non-oil industries capable of surviving after petroleum production declines.
Against this economic reality, Abrams argues that the Development Bank presents a rare opportunity not merely to expand access to credit, but to fundamentally reshape Guyana’s entrepreneurial landscape. Its ultimate success, she contends, should not be measured by the billions of dollars it lends or the number of loans it approves, but by whether it produces a new generation of Guyanese businesses that continue growing, exporting, creating jobs and building wealth long after their loans have been repaid. If the institution achieves that, she believes it will have done far more than finance businesses—it will have laid the foundation for a diversified, resilient economy capable of sustaining prosperity well beyond the country’s oil boom.
