Professor Ally Urges Industrial Transformation Through Oil Wealth

Professor Dr. Shamir Ally has called on Guyana to channel its oil revenues into manufacturing, agro-processing and technical training, warning that the country risks squandering a historic economic opportunity if its petroleum wealth fails to generate jobs and build a diversified, productive economy.

In his column Diplomatic Speak published by Village Voice News on September 26, 2026, Ally drew on the economic development model of Sir Dr. Arthur Lewis, the St Lucian-born economist who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Theodore Schultz. Lewis’s influential 1954 paper, Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour, examined how developing economies could move workers from traditional, low-productivity activities into modern, higher-productivity sectors.

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Ally argued that the model offers Guyana a framework for transforming oil revenues into broader productive capacity rather than allowing economic growth to remain concentrated in the petroleum industry.