PRESIDENT Donald Ramotar has expressed both confidence and optimism in Guyana’s growth potential, saying this country can become a modern and developed country in his lifetime.

“As I have said before, although I am no spring chicken any longer I still believe I have enough in me left to witness Guyana moving from a middle- income developing country as it is so described to being in the not-too-distant future as a developed country,” the 64-year-old Guyanese Head of State said.

He was speaking at the commissioning of Unicomer’s new and one-of-a-kind US$6M Distribution Centre on Wednesday where he lauded the massive investment which he said is very much a part of the “whole idea of making Guyana a modern and developed country”.

The President, however, alluded to the fact that for Guyana to achieve such a status, it has to be a joint effort. “This project itself is a grand partnership among the Government, private sector and other stakeholders to work together to make us a modern society,” he said.

Noting that the achievement of this is heavily dependent on people’s development, President Ramotar acknowledged that this is what his Government has been doing.
“We have invested heavily over the years in our people, since we wanted to provide investors with a work force that is highly educated,” he said, while simultaneouslyurging persons to peruse the Government’s budget and see for themselves that “most of our budget is placed in the social sector”.
According to the Guyanese Head of State, his government places major emphasis on the social sector, in which education takes the biggest bite.
“With this investment done over the years, we are able to see that this is having a positive impact on our economy as a whole. Over the last 20 years only 30% of our children were able to attend secondary schools and obtain an education; today we are almost, after achieving universal primary education, on the verge of achieving universal secondary education,” the President boasted.
He, however, acknowledged that there needs to be greater improvement in the education sector, especially in our interior locations, since this can become one of the major areas of development.
He said Government is currently working with the University of Guyana to put some of the courses online, so as to remove some of the impediments of remoteness that the interiors locations face.

“We have also been spending a lot of money on technical education and we now have Institutes in many parts of the country that we never had before and this is what we have been planning for, so that we can give our people more skills in anticipation that we were close to having cheap energy.”

HARNESSING CHEAP ENERGY
President Ramotar pointed out that the acquisition or harnessing of cheap energy is one of the most important factor in Guyana not being able to progress and develop as fast as it could have, and “the fact is that we don’t have cheap energy in our society.”

He added that despite the recent setback with the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, “we are still determined that we will have that project built here in Guyana so that we can provide cheap energy for the development of a strong industrial manufacturing sector and a strong processing sector.” Noting, however, that with this achievement we can have our agricultural sector soar. “We have a progressing agricultural sector and we can easily develop an agro- industrial complex,” he said.
“We need to connect the north and south of our country with all-weather roads, we need to have a paved highway from Linden to Lethem so that we can take advantage of the huge South American market that is just close to us, but we need more than that and infrastructure is expensive,” the President posited. He also stressed that we have seen it manifested that Guyana has really become a bridge between the Caribbean and South America.

Highlighting some of the projects in the pipeline for the future development of Guyana, the President said the country is in need of a Deep Water Harbour. With this in place, he said Guyana can then export its products in bulk and also take advantage of other numerous avenues that will open up to Guyana. “We also need another very expensive infrastructure that we have to invest in and that is the Deep Water Harbour,” the President said, noting that with the expansion of the Panama Canal, this will revolutionise maritime trade and Guyana must be prepared to take advantage of this development.
Another area with tremendous growth potential is Tourism, and President Ramotar said the possibilities are huge when it comes to this sector. “This product we have here is second to none and if we develop this product it can be a major contributor to this country’s economy. Tourism is a thriving sector and if given the chance to achieve its full potential, will become the future of this country’s development,” the President declared.
“Let us all work together to achieve in the shortest possible time a status of a developed country,” he urged. (Rebecca Ganesh-Ally)