Steven Jasmin - Guyana’s Great Transformation and Opportunities (Frontier Markets Podcast #7)

Steven/Stephen Jasmin framed Guyana as a “startup nation” undergoing a generational transformation because of recent offshore oil discoveries. He traces the modern story back to Exxon’s successful wells in 2015; by 2017 the recoverable resource had grown to roughly 2+ billion barrels. That discovery, combined with political stability after the disputed 2020 election and an active development push from the current administration, has created a compressed, high-velocity growth environment that Jasmin likens to a country “coming of age.” The host, Crescian Coupchand, punctuates the urgency by noting extraordinary GDP moves (a cited 2022 projection of ~40% and reported retroactive figures near ~60%), setting the scene for why international investors and operators are watching closely.

Jasmin lays out both what’s happening on the ground and what still must be built. He points to a cluster of enabling projects as early indicators of capacity building: continuous road construction since 2020, an industrial shore‑base/island reclamation project (local families + Exxon + Dutch contractor) to support marine operations, and a major new Demerara River bridge awarded to a Chinese EPC. He also highlights a government push for a single digital ID/single‑window system and a planned onshore gas pipeline plus a 300 MW power plant to take advantage of produced gas — a set of moves intended to cut power costs from the current ~>$0.40/kWh to roughly $0.06–$0.09/kWh, which would be transformational for manufacturing and heavy industry.

At the same time Jasmin stresses supply‑chain and institutional bottlenecks: Guyana historically handled only ~50,000 TEUs of container traffic, lacks deepwater port capacity, has an underdeveloped banking and payments ecosystem (examples: historical limits on card usage and mortgage servicing structures), and needs modern financial plumbing like equipment leasing, receivables finance and separable mortgage servicing. SC3, Jasmin’s firm (~30 people, founded after he moved there in 2017), is positioning itself intentionally at the intersection of capital and operations: it seeks to own high‑margin advisory and professional services businesses, act as developer/GC on priority real assets, and acquire operational firms that can satisfy local content requirements (e.g., staffing for petrochemical plants). A core theme is patient, self‑funded positioning: Jasmin deliberately used his own balance sheet early to avoid the timing pressure that outside LP money would impose.

The conversation concludes on human capital and governance. Jasmin argues that education, vocational training and diaspora engagement are urgent priorities: scaling local engineers, tradespeople and lawyers is necessary for sustained growth, and private models (employment‑tied financing, income‑share agreements, vocational schools) will be part of the solution. Throughout the interview both host and guest are aligned on a ‘crawl, walk, run’ framework — build the infrastructure and institutional scaffolding first, then scale capital‑intensive projects — while recognizing the political and operational risks in rapid resource‑led growth. Jasmin is optimistic but pragmatic: Guyana’s trajectory is rare in its velocity, but converting resource wealth into durable, broad‑based development requires predictable infrastructure, legal modernization, and patient capital.