PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo said Wednesday he is pleased with the performance of the economy, so far for the year, on the revenue side.
Speaking to the media at Office of the President, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown, he said that is although it has deteriorated from the previous year’s comparable period, as was expected because of the global financial crisis. The Head of State said despite what has happened, “in the real sector, we have still been able to maintain the revenue; in fact, we have a higher revenue in-flow this year than last year.”

He told reporters the programmes and budget are larger than the year before and many of the former that have been put in place.

“As you know, I have already announced about a special housing programme for low income people and we are moving to get $400M of the $2B in supplementary approved by Parliament soon, so we can start the revolving fund because we anticipate that, if we initiate this fund, we may use just about $400M for the year.

“And then, of course, the $1.6B will be put in the fund to ensure that people who may have passed the age where they can get a loan from the bank or those who cannot meet the collateral requirements of the bank will be able to own houses, too,” Mr. Jagdeo stated.

He said the Administration is putting quite a bit of resources aside for the health sector.

It is a very important thrust of the Government and, therefore, we are moving to quickly expand the services available to people in these areas.”

However, President Jagdeo said, while large sums of money are spent on the sector, somewhere, there is need to focus on quality.

We have been spending more, people have better facilities, salaries have increased, although not to the level we wish. We have more learning materials in schools now but we have to focus on quality,” he insisted.

In this regard, President Jagdeo said he has asked the relevant ministry to pay particular attention to this.

In spite of the global crisis, I think we have managed to hold things steady here, particularly if you look at the macro fundamentals you will see that they are stable unlike in many countries of the region and the rest of the world,” he compared.

He went on: “In Guyana’s case, we think we can cover all of our short term gaps, from the balance of payments perspective, because our budget will be fully financed, so we will not have that unfinanced fiscal gap and the balance of payments gap, too, could be met in the short term and over the medium term.”