Brothers Shiv and Hemant were 19 and 16 years old respectively when they left Guyana for Canada in 1982.
At that moment they left behind one of the poorest countries in the worldfollowing in the footsteps of thousands of other young Guyanese in search of a better life.
In North America, they raised families and made careers in real estate and finance.
In 2021, 39 years later, they took the opposite path.
“It was time to go back,” Shiv Misir, now 60, told BBC Brazil.
The brothers were attracted by the billions of petrodollars that have boosted Guyana’s economy in recent years.
They created a real estate company specializing in the sale and rental of high-value properties in the country’s capital, Georgetown.
Shiv and Hemant are two representatives of the new middle class that has emerged in (or returned to) the country in recent years since the beginning of oil exploration in the country.
Since 2019, that exploration has transformed the former British colony into one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
A boom unprecedented economic
Guyana is a country located in northern South America, between Suriname and Venezuela.
It has just over 800,000 inhabitants and emerged as a colony, initially Dutch, for the production of sugar cane.
It was not declared independent from the United Kingdom until 1966.
In 2015, the American oil company Exxon Mobil announced the discovery of gigantic economically viable oil fields on the coasts of the country.
In the following years, a consortium formed by Exxon Mobil, the American Hess and the Chinese CNOOC drilled wells just over 200 kilometers off the Guyanese coast.
To date, reserves of approximately 11 billion barrels of oilbut more recent estimates suggest that this volume could reach 17 billion.
This would be more than all of Brazil’s proven oil reserves, estimated at 14 billion barrels.
Until 2019, Guyana had an economy based on subsistence agriculture, gold and diamond mining, and logging.
Starting that year, oil revenues began to give a significant boost to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In 2020, Brazil’s then Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, even compared the country to one of the cities in the United Arab Emirates that has become a symbol of the wealth generated by oil.
“It is the new Dubai of the region”Guedes said.
And the numbers are really drawing attention.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that, between 2019 and 2023, the country’s GDP exceeded from US$5.17 billion to US$14.7 billiona jump of 184%.
In 2022 alone, GDP growth was an impressive 62%.
Likewise, the GDP per capita (the country’s wealth divided by the number of inhabitants) went from US$6,477 in 2019 to US$18,199 in 2022.
For comparison, that figure is more than double the GDP per capita in 2022 from Brazil and more than triple that of Guatemala.
“It’s like the country has won the lottery. It’s an opportunity that only comes around once in a lifetime.. There is a lot of optimism in the country,” Diletta Doretti, World Bank representative for Guyana and Suriname, told BBC Brazil.
As a result of the growth generated by oil, other sectors of the country’s economy have also grown.
According to the IMF, non-oil GDP growth in 2022 was 11.5%.
The effects are visible in the country’s main cities, such as the capital, Georgetown.
They can be seen cranes and workers working on infrastructure projects such as hospitals, highways, bridges and ports, as well as in the construction of luxury hotels for international chains such as the American Marriott and Best Western.
Along the new highways, there are dozens of newly built warehouses filled with tractors, excavators and other heavy construction equipment to meet the demand of construction sites in the country.
A new middle class
It was due to this economic boom that the Misir brothers decided to return to Guyana, although not permanently.
Since 2021, they both frequently travel between Toronto (Canada) and Georgetown to run their new business.
They explain that the money generated by oil has created opportunities for both the emerging middle class and the country’s current elite.
“People feel safer. They feel like they are part of something they can benefit from.”says Misir.
“There are many rich people in Guyana who are in real estate or who work in the oil industry supply chain.”
Shiv Misir says he knows other Guyanese who live in the United States or Canada and invest in property or land in Guyana in the hope of benefiting from the oil boom.
When they arrive in Guyana, they automatically become part of the new middle class.
“There are many Guyanese who are returning, they try to live in gated communities, in modern houses with private security, with all the comforts they had before, because they spent most of their lives in countries like the United States and Canada,” says Misir. .
Accustomed to dealing with clients with high purchasing power, Misir comments that part of the country’s elite still has the habit of making purchases abroad and that is why there are still no luxury stores in the country.
A vibrant market
Despite having been colonized by the Dutch and British, the country, like its neighbors in the Caribbean, maintains close commercial and cultural ties with the United States, just over a four-hour flight away.
According to Misir, the majority of the Guyanese elite send their children to study in the United States, Canada or Europe and takes advantage of his visits to his children to go sightseeing and enjoy the lifestyle of these countries.
The businessman affirms that, in recent years, the rapid growth of the economy has also encouraged the opening of businesses focused on the country’s elite.
“Our business, for example, is one of them,” he explains.
The Misir brothers’ real estate agency operates out of a small location in the MovieTowne shopping center, which opened in Georgetown in 2019, the same year that commercial oil exploration began in the country.
On the same floor, there is also imported wine cellars and perfumeries with famous brands like Dior.
Areas where sugar cane and rice were grown, once important sources of wealth for the country, now give way to luxury homes and gated communities in the suburbs of Georgetown.
It is a change that shows the transformations that the country is experiencing and how the new money that circulates is creating new habits and landscapes.
One of the new shopping centers is the Amazonia Mall, located on the eastern bank of the Demerara River, just over half an hour’s drive from the city center.
From a distance, you can see the sign for one of its main stores: a Starbucks franchise.
The location opened in April 2023, has more than 200 square meters and 50 employees. It is often full.
Starbucks told BBC Brazil that the store opening in the country was because the country is now “a vibrant market“.
In the eyes of the world
There are other signs of how quickly new oil wealth is coming to Guyana.
The country has begun to attract companies from various countries who are seeking contracts to build infrastructure works that the country has needed for decades.
Official figures show the government spent $187 million on infrastructure projects such as roads and ports in 2019, the first year of commercial oil exploration in the country.
By 2023, that figure reached US$650 million, an increase of 247%.
“I have lived here for almost two years. Every time I travel out of the country, I notice the difference when I come back,” says Diletta Doretti of the World Bank.
“A lot of infrastructure is being built, such as new roads and hotels. The large number of business missions that arrive in the country is also noticeable.”
Amid an unprecedented flow of resources, the country has become something of a global construction site.
Guyana is also being courted by countries that offer credit to finance contractors.
“We have companies from the European bloc, China, India, the United States, Canada and Brazil,” Deodat Indar, who holds the position equivalent to Guyana’s deputy minister of Public Works, told BBC Brazil.
China appears on that board as one of the main players.
A consortium of Chinese companies, for example, won the tender to build a new bridge over the Demerara River. The work was financed by the Bank of China.
The project is considered vital for the country’s development, because the bridge will replace one that has been in use for more than 30 years and whose flow is interrupted several times a day for ships to pass.
The new bridge will have a suspension structure and will allow ships to pass underneath. The project is valued at US$260 million.
Chinese businessmen are also responsible for the construction of hotels and a number of hospitals contracted by the Guyana government.
But China has competitors. In 2022, an Indian contractor won a $106 million tender to build a highway.
Austria also offered credit for a company from that country to build a public hospital contracted by the Guyana government. The value of the project amounts to US$161 million.
Some companies bring with them employees from their own countries. This is the case of the Chinese consortium that builds the bridge over the Demerara River. The project works are divided between Chinese and Guyanese workers.
At the end of 2023, Guyana came into the international spotlight due to the long dispute between Venezuela and that country over the Essequibo regionafter the Venezuelan government held a referendum to annex that region.
The Essequibo, with approx. Currently 160,000 square kilometers, it represents 70% of Guyana’s territory. It is a region rich in minerals such as gold, copper and diamonds, and recently they have also been discovered there. huge deposits of oil and other hydrocarbons.
Wealth and inequality
David Hinds is Guyanese and has been living between the United States and his native country for almost four decades.
He is a professor at Arizona State University (USA) and specializes in studies on the Caribbean and the African diaspora.
Hinds explains that Guyana is a country with a very marked social and class division.
Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the country was colonized by Europeans who used the labor of enslaved Africans to produce sugar.
With the abolition of slavery in 1833, the United Kingdom began bringing immigrants from East Asia, especially from the region that is now India, as well as Chinese and Portuguese, to Guyana.
According to the government, 39.8% of the population is of Indian origin30% are of African descent, 10.5% are indigenous and 0.5% have other origins, such as Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese.
Hinds states that the policies adopted by the then British Empire encouraged immigrants of Asian and Portuguese origin to work in areas such as commerce and the country’s nascent industry.
“Descendants of Indians and Portuguese are part of Guyana’s economic elite,” he says.
The descendants of enslaved Africans, on the other hand, Hinds explains, began working in low-skilled jobs or in public service.
The professor affirms that Guyana’s “new rich” end up coming from the same economic elite that settled in the country.
“The people who are taking advantage of (the economic boom) are those that are already entrenched in Guyana’s elite“says the teacher.
BBC Brazil asked the Guyanese government about the marked social inequality in the country, but there was no response.
“New Dubai”
Businessman Richard Singh sells imported cars in Georgetown.
In the city center, he watches as his employees carefully polish the more than 20 cars parked at his dealership.
He has been fond of cars and technology since childhood. He sells used cars, mostly imported from countries like Japan, where, as in Guyana, they have the steering wheel on the right side.
According to him, despite the oil dollars, the country’s elite still prefers used cars because the taxes for importing cars with zero kilometers are too high and the country still lacks labor and access to spare parts. which would make the maintenance of this type of vehicle practically impossible.
Between imported BMWs and cars from Japanese manufacturers, Singh told BBC Brazil that there has been a change in his clientele since the start of oil exploration in the country.
Your business is no longer only frequented by small local business owners and independent professionals.
Now Large foreign corporations also frequent it linked to the oil and gas industry, who are looking for vehicles for their employees and executives.
Singh, who knows the consumer habits of the Guyanese elite, says he sees a sort of “new middle class” emerging in the country.
“Yes, there is a new middle class. It sits just above Guyana’s old middle class,” says Singh.
Increased profits allow Singh to pursue one of his passions: motorsport.
In May of last year, for example, he traveled to Miami to watch Formula 1.
But the businessman believes that the much talked about boom in the country’s economy has not yet reached its peak.
“I am very optimistic. I think Guyana is about to explode [económicamente]says Singh.
Between cars, Singh agrees with the comparison with Dubai in a hopeful tone.
“I always saw stories about Dubai. In the ’90s, if you went there, it was all sand and desert. Now, you wouldn’t even recognize him,” she states.
“It is my hope and ambition that in 20 years people will look back and say, ‘I can’t believe that was Guyana.’ I hope that happens here too“.
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