Guyana is a newly independent republic, which became independent from the British Empire in 1966. Yet, its history stretches back more than 500 years. The Europeans first discovered Guyana in 1498. It is a small, open economy with relatively low levels and volume of transactions. It suffers from a set of economic challenges, among which are generally low economic well-being, a large income disparity, insecurity of wealth and savings, and weak property rights. It is possible to trace the beginning of Guyana’s property rights “system” back to the late 1800s, with its variations depending on the plot sharing along the shore among the Dutch, Portuguese, French, and British. At the time, property and ownership rights were based on the exploitation of land for the purposes of the owner being the “explorer” or “colonizer.” In other words there were no “property rights” per se, but “exploring rights.” Following this situation there was the actual colonization of sections of the shore lands by various countries with distinct legal traditions. Some use the basis of the civil code—as applied in the Dutch countries—and some use it as applied in France at the time. When the British Empire took over, it transported all transactional behaviors, rights, and ownership or usage certificates to the common law tradition as applied at the time. As a result, today there is a constellation not only of different legal systems, but also of a divergent understanding of ownership, as well as other rights as they relate to property, land, housing, and mines.
Guyana has adopted and maintained a dual legal framework, which is a hybrid of two legal traditions: the Civil Code legal tradition transplanted from continental Europe and the Roman Law, and the Common Law tradition introduced by the British. The country also has a dual registry system of property rights with distinct requirements, processes, and enforcement mechanisms. The two types of registry systems are deeds (Deeds Registry) and title (Land Registry) registries that operate in separate jurisdictions, which in theory helps avoids the problem of double entry and dual registration. But overall Guyana’s property rights system is overly bureaucratic and complex, with regulations that are overlapping and competing, overloaded, and nontransparent. This affects the proper allocation, enforcement and effectiveness of property rights, as well as, the efficiency of all property-based markets such as housing, land, commercial property and financial markets (especially primary ones such as mortgage markets). What complicates matters even more is that neither of the two registry systems is effective. In Guyana, the property rights system is largely ineffective in all its three aspects: security and effectiveness of emitting the right, organizational management of the rights; and enforcement of the rights. As a result, individual property rights are insecure, costly, and deemed by many Guyanese owners as unnecessary; thus, a significantly large percentage of owners either do not register their property, or keep their ownership rights updated.