US backs Guyana as emerging South America-Caribbean logistical corridor

United States Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Jacob Helberg has said Washington sees strong potential for Guyana to emerge as a strategic trade corridor linking northern Brazil and the Caribbean, as he and President Dr Irfaan Ali discussed investment opportunities in bauxite, logistics infrastructure, tourism and regional connectivity.

Helberg was on Wednesday locked in discussions with the Guyanese leader at State House, with key focus on strengthening Guyana-US relations, especially in areas of energy security and logistics.

The US official later told a press briefing at the US Embassy with members of the local media corps that the Trump administration is in the process of identifying its strategic trading partners for the next 25 to 30 years, and that Guyana presents significant opportunities for long-term economic and commercial cooperation.

“We are currently recalibrating our trading relationships and making very affirmative, deliberate decisions on who our most trusted partners are going to be, and we’re very excited to come here and really see firsthand for ourselves the breadth of opportunity that there is in Guyana. It was incredibly refreshing and energising to see the level of ambition and energy that President Ali brings to his economic agenda… we’re thrilled and excited to work with his government hand in hand on unlocking economic opportunities for infrastructure investments, to unlock opportunities for the energy sector, for data centers and technology, and so many other opportunities including agriculture and transportation and all the rest,” he expressed.

In fact, Helberg said the US private sector has over US$55 trillion dollars of floating assets which he described as “the single biggest pool of investment that will be most benefit to Guyana” as well as America.

“So, we really spend a lot of time focusing on those incentives and what the right parameters would be to accelerate private investment,” Helberg said of his discussions with the Guyanese leader.

Bauxite, Trade Corridor

A key area of discussion was investments in the bauxite sector, with Helberg noting that Guyana could expand global exports through modern infrastructure.

“We talked about the opportunities around bauxite and expanding Guyana’s economic activities in the bauxite sector with additional private investment. We also talked about ways that infrastructure investments especially in roads and potentially autonomous trucking technology can actually be catalytic to get more Guyanese bauxite on the global market because as you know Guyana can have a lot of natural reserves but Guyana needs a way to get those reserves into offtake agreements and to market,” the US official said.

This conversation, he noted, expanded into discussions on how Guyana could position itself as a regional logistics hub.

“…ways that Guyana can actually be a logistics hub for northern Brazil, which [is] densely populated into the northern part of South America, in order to allow ships to go to Panama much more efficiently than the current route today that currently forces that trade in northern Brazil to go through a really substantial multi-week detour…”

“…connecting northern Brazil to the Caribbean through Guyana, really has an opportunity to shrink time delays by several orders of magnitude. So, it was a very, very positive exchange on opportunities that could actually be unlocked fairly easily with the right level of business certainty,” Helberg explained.

Guyana is actively developing a major trade corridor with northern Brazil to establish itself as a strategic logistics link between South America, the Caribbean, and beyond. Key plans include upgrading the Linden-to-Lethem Road and developing a deep-water port.

According to Helberg, “connecting South America to the Caribbean Ocean through Guyana and making Guyana a logistical corridor using AI technology to make it a 22nd century logistical corridor through AI and automation” is a very promising sector.

Other Minerals

While bauxite was the primary focus of the discussions, Helberg said talks also explored the surveying of lands that may contain significant untapped reserves of other critical minerals and resources.

“We did talk about things that were prospective but obviously because the reserves of bauxite are known and there are already investments today, we talked a fair amount about those but I think generally speaking we both understand that Guyana is a country with a lot of natural resources and so it’s not a leap to consider that there are probably many more types of minerals that could be available if proper surveying is done. Ultimately part of our strategy, with focusing on bringing more foreign investment into Guyana, is to make it a lot easier in order to actually do these types of surveying technologies,” he noted.

Working Group

Helberg said discussions also focused on other areas of partnerships such as in technology, tourism and agriculture.

“We talked about energy, we talked about minerals, we talked about data centers, we talked about agri-tech and food tech and we talked a lot about entrepreneurship. We also talked about tourism and the megafauna and the natural attributes that Guyana possesses that really holds a lot of opportunity to bring tourism here. So, we really covered it was a very wide-ranging discussion,” he remarked.

He noted that technical discussions would follow Wednesday’s meeting.

“We may explore the establishment of a working group to ensure a certain level of cadence and follow-through, but ultimately there was perfect alignment on the goal which was we want to accelerate private investment and really make Guyana one of the most prosperous economies in the western hemisphere which it really has the potential to be,” he noted.

Helberg visited Guyana on Wednesday as part of a Caribbean-South American tour to advance American interests and strengthen partnerships on energy security and critical mineral supply chains in the region.

Accompanying President Ali and Helberg during these discussions, which took place at State House, were Ministers Dr Ashni Singh, Hugh Todd, Vickram Bharrat and Zulfikar Ally, along with Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud and Director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency, Colonel Sheldon Howell.

US Ambassador to Guyana, Nicole Theriot, was also part of the discussions.