By Neil Marks in Malta

PRESIDENT David Granger Friday courted Singapore’s help in a number of key areas.Granger met with Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies of Singapore on the margin of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) here.
“The most important thing is that Singapore, as you know, is a highly developed country.
“It’s a small country and Guyana is a bigger country than Singapore but it is not well developed,” the President noted following his meeting.
He said that while Guyana and Singapore have had very cordial relations, there is very little in terms of trading; “the economic relations are scant.”
Granger said that Singapore is “rich in education, rich in technology” and the government would like to develop relations with Singapore, “so that Guyana could be assisted in developing the infrastructure that we need, particularly[in] the hinterland so that we can get access to our resources.”

The President also sees Singapore as being able to advance the work of the Iwokrama International Rainforest Conservation Centre.
“Right now climate change is back on the agenda and coastal zone management and global warming – and these are areas in which we feel that Singapore can help us technologically, educationally and scientifically.”
Granger also spoke to Minister Shanmugaratnam on the status of the controversy with Venezuela.

Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge told Guyanese media in Malta that while Guyana has had political relations with Singapore, “there has not been a great deal done to concretise these, except by way of offer of scholarships.” However, he said that even some of the offers of scholarships were not taken up perhaps because the potential beneficiaries found the need to garner airfare “perhaps too onerous.”
“So it’s not virgin ground, but we have now put in place the groundwork to take it up to an additional gear,” Greenidge said regarding the move to improve relations with Singapore.

Greenidge noted that Singapore is a country which was not radically different from Guyana in the 1960s in terms of its level of development, but it was able to “dramatic things” due to the remarkable vision of its leader. Greenidge said that areas of cooperation discussed with Mr Shanmugaratnam included investment opportunities.
“The Prime Minister was very responsive and we agreed to have a mechanism to concretise these proposals,” Greenidge stated. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, died in late March; he is credited with overseeing the tiny country’s rise from a British colonial backwater to a global trade and financial centre.