In December 2025 the Inter-American Development Bank published a 389-page flagship report on competition across Latin America and the Caribbean. Guyana is named four times in that report, and each mention deserves more attention than it has received in our business press. The numbers are not abstract economic indicators. They are the daily reality of every Guyanese business that imports inputs, exports goods, or competes with imports in the domestic market.
The first number is the most damaging. Direct exports leaving Guyana take an average of more than ten days to clear customs. That puts the country third-worst in the entire region, behind only Brazil and Suriname. Countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Uruguay clear exports in under five days. Every additional day a container sits in the queue is working capital tied up, refrigerated cargo at risk, and a buyer in another country who is recalculating whether they can rely on Guyanese supply. An exporter in Georgetown competing for an order against an exporter in San Salvador starts the day a week behind, before either of them does any actual work.
The second and third numbers are about freight. Guyana’s average ad valorem import freight rate is 7.5%, slightly above the LAC regional average of 7.3% and well above the OECD comparator of 6.2%. For exports to the United States, the freight rate climbs to 9.9%, compared with the LAC average of 7.9% and the OECD comparator of 5.8%. That last figure is among the highest in the region. A Guyanese exporter sending goods to a US buyer pays a freight tax twenty-five percent above the regional average, before the goods even leave port. In low-margin businesses, which is most businesses, that gap is the difference between winning a contract and losing it.
The fourth number is more flattering. On the Fraser Institute’s measure of regulatory burden of government involvement in business operations, Guyana ranks seventy-eighth of one hundred and sixty-five economies globally, better than nine LAC peers including Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. That is worth knowing. It tells us that the rules on the books are not the binding constraint. The binding constraint is operational, in the day-to-day friction of getting goods through ports, across borders, and onto buyers’ shelves.
The IDB’s deeper point about these numbers is the part our policy conversation has not yet absorbed. Slow customs and high freight are not just inefficiencies. They function as informal protection for domestic incumbent firms, letting them charge higher prices, pay lower wages, and crowd out new entrants. A foreign competitor cannot affordably reach the Guyanese consumer. A Guyanese competitor cannot affordably reach the foreign consumer. The market is fragmented from both directions, and the firms with the political connections and the established distribution networks capture the resulting rents.
The reform agenda is concrete. Move customs processing toward genuine twenty-four-hour, seven-day operations with the staffing levels the trade volumes now require. Implement the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement provisions in full, particularly on advance rulings and risk-based inspection. Negotiate freight aggregation with CARICOM partners to bring container costs closer to regional norms. Publish customs clearance times monthly so business can plan and the public can hold the system accountable.
The IDB has told us, in numbers we cannot dispute, that Guyana is among the slowest and most expensive places in the region to move goods through. Until that changes, the business environment will be defined by the friction at the border, not the talent in the country.