– President Jagdeo
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo said last Thursday that Guyanese must constantly be cognisant of the global challenges that face the nation, because “they are strongly correlated to our well-being.”
He was speaking at the opening of the annual Guyana Police Force (GPF) Officers’ Conference, under the theme ‘Providing Effective Security through Improved Police-Community relations’, at Police Officers’ Mess, Eve Leary, Georgetown,
The Head of State, alluding to the global economic and financial situation and the continuing challenges to be faced, took note of the great deal of uncertainties.
He recalled that, the last time he addressed that forum, he emphasised the difficult year that “we were just embarking upon.”
“A year that was froth with danger for the world and, particularly, the developing world,” President Jagdeo remarked, adding it has seen the manifestation of significant hardships for people right across the world and full of turmoil in the financial as well as the commodities market.
He noted that tens of millions of people lost their jobs and homes and “the world has become poorer by almost a third, if measured by the financial market in just one year.”
“…so I said to you, at that time, that we would face significant challenges here, because our country, by its very nature, has to rely on the external economic and trade environment for our fortune.
“And, since that environment was in a state of uncertainty, we would, ourselves, have a difficult time at the policy making level,” President Jagdeo recounted.
However, he said, fortunately for Guyana, during the good years or better years, the Government had started addressing the important things in the country and its economy allowed us to have the fiscal and monetary tools to stave off some of the worst excesses of the financial crisis.

One direction
President Jagdeo said the country’s macro fundamental in the past 14 to 15 years has gone in one direction “towards greater stability and international norm.”
He observed that interest rates have gone down, the fiscal deficit has come down and, more importantly, the country paid off, over those years, US$1.6 billion of debt, in addition to the debt relief.
“So, by the time the crisis hit, we were just using four per cent of revenue to service debt, rather than 94 per cent when we took office,” he explained.
President Jagdeo said many Caribbean countries were accumulating debt in that period and, today, many of them are where Guyana was some fifteen years ago.
He cited Jamaica, as an example, using 100 per cent of its revenue to service debt now, a feature in most Caribbean economies.
“I am leading a task force now, a regional task force, to try to see how we can fix this problem because, unless we fix the problem for those countries, they will face a devastating economic time over the next ten years,” President Jagdeo stated.
He said that it is a real situation and Guyana managed to ride last year out in a fairly decent way, with revenue increased in a crisis year and posting positive growth.
President Jagdeo, pointing out that Government had just presented its $142.8 billion National Budget for 2010, said: “…and we are doing so at a time when there is still a great deal of uncertainty about where the world will go and, depending on where the world goes, the kinds of policies that we would have to take at the national level may have to shift, to be adjusted during the course of the year.”
He went on: “But we don’t know, for example, what will be the strength of the United States (U.S) dollar in global market this year.”
President Jagdeo emphasised that the commodities market is critical to Guyana because the country’s exports have seen some growth and a lot of it has not been because of active demand for production in many parts of the world.

Severe difficulties
Referring to the bauxite situation, he said, unless there is a quick return to global demand for it, severe difficulties will be faced.
“And this is why, when we urge, and many people don’t know that we urged, the union to be cautious in the Berbice area, particularly, because the same company that has invested there shut down three of their Jamaica operations,” he informed.
President Jagdeo said, in fact, many of their plants across the world were shut down because of the reduction in global demand.
Warning that, if the same company shuts down its local facilities, 600 families would be without income, he said, in many parts of the world, people are accepting pay cuts just to maintain their jobs.
“We have to be cautious, since the commodities market remains volatile and saturated,” President Jagdeo advised, acknowledging that there could be difficulties and those are all variables that are very important.
“…so, as we enter this new year and we have just presented our new budget – the biggest budget ever in the history of our country – and as we remain optimistic about the future, we must constantly be cognisant of the challenges that face us globally because they are strongly correlated to our well-being and we must never become complacent,” he reiterated.
He said that is a challenge for policy makers that is not easy, and a much deeper understanding of it is required.